


Principal Components

by eve11



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Biology, Alien Perception, Capture/Escape, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV TARDIS, Paradox, Probability Measure, Temporal Mechanics, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 44,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4787780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eve11/pseuds/eve11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Anyone could last two months in prison.</i>  After an adventure in 1969 goes wrong, River has to infiltrate an isolated base in the US desert to rescue the Doctor from captivity at the hands of military scientists.  By the time she discovers the lengths they have gone to learn the Doctor's secrets, it may be too late to save either of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started out in January 2011 as a "what if" story from a prompt based on the series 6 trailer. Then it kept going. Four years later, it's been adapted and updated and retro-fitted and is still going on. The end is in sight though, and I figured it was time to start sharing it more broadly. Many thanks to those who have given me encouragement along the way: clocketpatch, ladymercury_10, phoenixdragon, flowsoffire, nonelvis, vattelapesca, various anons on the meme where it began for all their feedback and cheerleading. You are all the best.

02 August, 1969  
0800 hours

Two months. 

Walking confidently behind her military escort under the bright Nevada sun, River Song tried not to linger on that thought. She was here now, and that's what was important. But it had been two months since the Doctor had been captured. The last time she'd seen him, they'd been at a dead end, cornered by the American Secret Service in the east wing of the White House in Washington D.C. Trying to talk their way out of the situation had already gotten Rory concussed and Amy shot in the arm. River had just melted her vortex manipulator into slag in an attempt to jump too many people too quickly over too short a distance--a last ditch effort to get back to the secluded alley off of H street where the TARDIS was waiting for them.

His decision had been swift and irrevocable. As the guards closed in on their position, the Doctor had simply kissed her on the cheek, offered a quick instruction--"Take the south exit"--and fled back into the lion's den, straight toward the Oval Office, to give them time to escape. It was so early for him; he didn't know her well enough yet to trust that River should have been the one to go back. He'd known enough to entrust Amy and Rory to her care, and he may have guessed that River Song was not the kind of person to take self-sacrifice lightly. By the time she'd felt the sonic screwdriver in her hand and understood what was about to happen, she'd had no choice but to do as she was told.

She could hate him for that later--some time when they both remembered it, when she was more than just a mystery he had yet to puzzle out. Some time when Amy and Rory didn't look at her with no recognition in their eyes. For now, it was better now to keep her past at a distance. The lifetimes she had lived prior to Berlin, nineteen-thirty-six, slept deeply in her mind, and they were the one set of artifacts that River didn't make a habit of exhuming or examining. She had never truly belonged to those times, and long ago she had learned the advantages of keeping them buried. She had anchored herself anew, to Luna University in the fifty-first century--and then to the blue box that sang through her thoughts in the depths of Stormcage, and to the madman who completed them both. 

The TARDIS had gone into lockdown not long after the Doctor had disappeared. They could use the med bay to heal Amy's fractured wrist, and they could use the scanners and data banks to monitor communications. But the ship's psyche was distant and reserved. She wouldn't translate River's fifty-first century standard speech into the ancient English she'd spoken as a child, and she wouldn't budge into the Vortex, even under River's most patient and pleading piloting attempts. River loved the ship, of course, but her connection with the TARDIS would never be the same as a psychic link built over centuries of companionship. Rationally, she knew that the Doctor's mental "hand" never really left the TARDIS controls even when he seemed to turn them completely over to her. She had always had the luxury to ignore that fact--until now. Now the ship was anchored in the current time stream like a bridge strut in rapids, and that couldn't be a good sign.

Two months. Two months was nothing, she told herself. Anyone could last two months in prison. Anyone . . . 

She forced the thought away.

"He's still uncooperative?" she asked as they walked.

"Well, he's staying put, for now, at least," her base escort, a Sergeant Kevin James, tersely informed her. It did little to hide the frustration and anger seething under the words. James was head of project security, and the Doctor was never an easy assignment. 

River nodded in acknowledgement, keeping her true feelings at a greater distance than James did his. 

Her assignment hadn't been easy either. It had taken six weeks just to find him. Each day, the scanners had scrolled inexorably through events in ancient American history books--the Stonewall riots, Chappaquiddick, Neil Armstrong's iconic moonwalk--until they'd intercepted a top secret communication from Groom Lake, looking for an alien tech consultant ("That's, consultant for alien tech, and not, ah, tech consultant who's an alien", Rory had clarified) for a special project. Base security requested an outside opinion on some equipment being used in a mobile laboratory, and there were several remarks that led River to conclude it was for prisoner containment and study. 

More digging--and a few well-placed hammer strikes to the console--had unearthed a top secret dossier, already over a month old.

_High security and flight risk led to remanding of Detainee #234-DS-8 from DC area to Groom Lake facility. In the past ten days of interrogation, detainee has provided no information beyond the demonstration of seventeen distinct vulnerabilities in the base's procedural and physical security, by means of nearly escaping through each one. Exploits include but are not limited to: creative use of found materials (bed springs, bar soap and a stolen pen), discovery of camera dead zone time spans, taking advantage of critical resources (jeeps, refueling stations) placed too near prisoner transport routes, aural keypad pattern recognition, and compromising human guards through a combination of seemingly innocuous communication and duplicity._

"We are grateful for any assistance and expertise Van Statten Industries can offer." James said. "But watch yourself, Doctor Hamilton. He's not as docile as he seems."

"I'll stay on my toes," River answered.

It had taken another two weeks to exploit weaknesses in the government sub-contracting infrastructure and to fabricate River's identity for the rescue mission. The TARDIS contained detailed records of a tech warehousing company in Utah, a ten-hour drive from the secluded Groom Lake facility, that had a funding source traced through a company that by the 22nd-century was so well known as a U.S. government black-ops clearinghouse, that it was literally a dictionary word meaning "slush fund." Intercepting phone calls, and forging an identity and a set of official orders for River, had been the easy part. 

Then, River had hot-wired a 1967 step-van delivery truck, they muscled the TARDIS face up into the back, and set off across the country. River spent the three-day trip flattening her vowels and practicing a neutral midwestern American English accent. Amy and Rory spent the time learning how to drive on the other side of the road. Now, Amy and Rory were waiting patiently with the TARDIS as close as they dared bring her, forty miles away at a public wildlife park along Nevada route 318, where they could blend in with weary cross-country tourists and adventurous families on day trips. Now it was all up to River.

Base security cleared River after a thorough search that divulged no weapons, chemicals, alien technological devices, or brainwave anomalies. She hadn't brought anything; if nothing else, they had known beforehand about the thorough security checks. That led to the other reason it had taken so long to get here: devising an escape plan.

She could feel the coil of the psychic switch she'd implanted at the back of her consciousness, even though she knew she couldn't activate it. It was the only secret weapon she could get past the security perimeter, and it had taken a monumental effort to get the TARDIS to co-operate even for this. Keyed through a quantum link to the TARDIS fast return systems, it was suitably jury-rigged to home in on River's location. All she had to do was find the right moment to transfer the switch to the Doctor's consciousness, and he could trigger it with a thought, bringing the TARDIS, Amy and Rory right to them. Less than thirty seconds alone, out of gunshot range or other imminent danger, should suffice.

They met two scientific liaisons, complete with white lab coats over their blue Air Force fatigues, after they passed through the N.R.O. perimeter. Major Charles Ogden was a tall, wiry man who looked to be military first, scientist second, from his crew cut and Air Force issue glasses. Specialist Henry Duvall was a smaller, stockier man with a dark five-o'clock shadow, who seemed more nervous around the ordnance at the checkpoint. He was probably an expert recruited from one of the think tanks: Pacific Northwest or Los Alamos National Laboratories being the closest. Experience told River he was the most likely human security vulnerability to exploit. There also seemed to be no love lost between James and the scientists; they barely acknowledged each others' presence before heading down into the bowels of the complex.

Following the descent from the main office and elevator bay, they walked past four rooms labeled "LABORATORY", then through a set of unmarked double doors requiring a badge and passcode, and then into a bright white corridor. The corridor was lined with yellow metal doors, each with reinforced glass windows at eye level. An official sign had been hung on the wall nearest the fourth door on the left, reading EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS: DO NOT INTERACT WITH SUBJECT. River set her jaw against the light-headed nausea that swept through her, but she couldn't keep those words from fueling the rage that had been kindled to a slow-simmering burn in the pit of her stomach ever since she'd first set eyes on that Top Secret report.

_Detainee is known by the code name of "The Doctor"--a fact he shared with any and all thirty seconds after capture. Original assessment: heart defect, deadly aspirin allergy, and clinical diagnosis inconclusive between savant and paranoid schizophrenic. After consultation and re-evaluation, case has been transferred to the National Reconnaissance Office: directorate of Applied Extra-Terrestrial Research. If collaboration goes well, Area 51 of the Groom Lake Experimental Aircraft and Xenotech Research Facility can be expanded to a permanent laboratory for xenobiological studies._

It was one thing to read it on the TARDIS information console, and another to come face to face with the reality of the situation. But she could not afford to let her emotions take over, not here. A good soldier knew how to recognize situations where even the best tactical training in the universe would fail, and those situations included infiltrating underground laboratories twenty miles from nothing, surrounded by hundreds of armed, well-trained enemies. River quelled her rising fury by embracing her current role, putting on her best show of clinical detachment and pointing at the sign. "We're authorized for contact?" she asked.

"Of course, Doctor Hamilton," Ogden answered. He produced a thin electronic data pad, obviously no technology local to 1969 era Earth, from an oversized pocket and indicated it with a wave. "I checked out the resource card and equipment allocated to subject 36 at the perimeter. We've got him all to ourselves for the next three hours. Henry and I have come up with some hypotheses we want to test."

"Naturally, you'll want to get a look at the experimental conditions, and at the initial data collection," Duvall begrudgingly offered.

River's fingers itched for a sidearm. Patience, she reminded herself. Anyway, there was no need to torch this place, guns blazing, no matter how much she wanted to. If everything went according to plan, they would be out of Area 51 and back into the vortex in a few hours. 

"Open it up," she said. The guards took up positions on either side of the door, and Ogden opened the cell by swiping the resource card across the lock and entering a three-stroke chorded key combination. 

And there, finally, after two months of planning and searching, was the Doctor.

Dressed in olive drab scrubs, he was sitting on the side edge of a bunk in the corner, elbows on widespread knees, fingers interlocked over the top of his bent head, still as a statue. He didn't react to the door unlatching, but as it scraped open across the uneven corridor floor he slowly and deliberately unlaced his fingers, and looked up. In the harsh light River caught a flash of something--flat, round, black, metallic--at the nape of his neck, before his face came into view, and her breath caught in her throat.

He looked awful. His hair was long and unkempt, spiked at odd angles from where he'd been resting his fingers. His ragged beard seemed to have grown unchecked for weeks, and his half-lidded eyes were shadowed with exhaustion and fatigue. He frowned in their direction, furrowing his brow in concentration. His eyes--usually so bright, so focused--wandered the length and breadth of the doorway until he seemed to catch himself and blinked, staring blankly past Ogden, Duvall and James as they filed into the room. He didn't acknowledge River at all. 

It was obvious he couldn't see a thing. 

"Back again, are you?" he asked, sounding tired and intellectually bored. That was almost normal, but River could hear how his consonants were just slightly more accentuated and calculated, and how his cadence was just slightly slower than his usual speech patterns. Something--something else--was wrong. She watched as he tensed, fingers grabbing at the thin mattress by his side like an anchor, and closed his useless eyes. "And with someone new--?" he started. 

Ogden immediately checked his data pad. Beside him, Duvall drew out a plastic stylus and vied for a chance to annotate the screen, eyes traveling back and forth from the Doctor to the readout. James left the scientists to their impromptu research summit and fished at his belt for a set of handcuffs. River simply stood at the doorway, in shocked silence.

The Doctor remained oblivious to the activity around him. His outward concentration receded as he reached some kind of realization, and he relaxed, straightening his arms at his sides and drumming curious fingers against the edge of the mattress. This time he did look directly at the doorway where River stood. He took a breath and gave a slow, sly smile.

"Hello, sweetie," he said.

Tension in the room snapped as Sergeant James took two steps and hit the Doctor hard on the cheek. "Show some respect!" he snarled. The Doctor was blindsided but absorbed the blow, falling backward onto his elbows. 

River broke out of her daze and was at James' side in a heartbeat, catching his fist in the air as he brought it back again. 

"Sergeant!" Ogden exclaimed.

James' eyes stayed focused on the Doctor, but River felt the trigger impulse of another blow leach out of his fist, and she let him shake his hand free of her grip. "I won't tolerate that kind of attitude toward women," James warned. 

"And I don't need your chivalry," River said icily. 

On the bunk, the Doctor brought a hand to his cheek, wincing and testing the spot of impact for blood. "Hello, Sergeant James," he added. 

"Just watch your mouth," James replied. 

Duvall glanced witheringly at the sergeant. "You know he can't hear you."

"I know he has a history of lying." James aimed his words at the Doctor, but received no recognition from him.

Duvall sighed, crossing the room. He chased the Doctor's hands from his face and bent his head forward, clinically but not gently, to reveal the disc at the back of his neck. It was roughly an inch in diameter, its polished titanium surface reflecting light from a series of raised radial serrations emanating from the flat centerpiece. The Doctor froze, sucking in a hiss of pain when Duvall's fingers traced the edge of the device. He twisted the bedsheets in his hands and strangled a cry, as Duvall explained, "He can't lie about this. We've shown you the readings."

"Please--" the Doctor gasped, all bravado gone from his voice. "Please stop that."

"Interesting," Duvall remarked, leaning closer. "There's no scar tissue at all." He brushed the center of the disc and this time the Doctor couldn't keep from crying out. He let out a grunt of shock and pain and a hissed "Stop!" extended to three trembling syllables.

"Henry, let him go," said Ogden. 

Duvall shrugged and released him. The Doctor sat up immediately, smoothing his thin sleeves with a flick of his wrists and stopping his hand half-way toward the act of straightening a nonexistent bow tie. "Thank you. Much better." He sniffed to cover a shaky breath, and obediently held out his hands. "So, have we finished with the bickering and violence for today? Are we ready to go?"

His blank eyes looked right at River as he spoke, and her heart fell. _Not yet, my love_ , she willed at him. There were too many people here, and too much uncertainty. But of course, she could communicate nothing to him. The only answer he received was James snapping cuffs around his wrists and hauling him up from the bunk.

"Get him to the lab," Ogden said to his colleague, then turned to the sergeant. "James, I'd like a word with you and Doctor Hamilton."

Duvall signaled the guards from their posts. James reluctantly handed the prisoner over and ushered them out. 

"No need to rush," the Doctor muttered as he passed by. The sound of footsteps and clinking chains faded down the corridor as he was led away, and farther off, the Doctor's voice rose and resonated into an indistinct, blithe bellow of a chant or song. There was a buzz from the connecting door, and then they were gone. 

Ogden turned to the sergeant in the ensuing silence. He was calm and collected, and obviously furious. "I would appreciate it if you refrained from damaging my experiments. I am of course willing to work with contracted experts, but we had a crucial reading back there that was interrupted by your… sensibilities."

"Sir," James countered. "This prisoner is patient, opportunistic, and dangerous. He has a history of devious and manipulative behavior--"

"I can see that, Sergeant. It took two weeks of interrogations for him to learn exactly how to push your buttons--a skill, I might add, which he continues to excel at." Ogden tapped the data pad against his hand. "Remind me what you learned in return?"

James brushed off the rebuke. "Major, I have the Colonel's authority on this matter. If something is wrong with your device it could be putting this whole base at risk! He's a completely unknown species--"

"SMM is proven technology, even for uncategorized aliens," Ogden said. "It's based on physiological constants. He can't subvert it."

"He's certainly subverting something!" James said. "He must have seen Doctor Hamilton in the doorway--"

"Impossible."

"He heard her footsteps then. Her heels--" 

"Heels," Ogden repeated, looking down at River's shoes. Area 51 was no place for anything fancy; she was dressed in a business skirt, nylons, and military loafers.

"If not that, then how--?"

"We don't know!" Ogden finally exclaimed. "That's what we're trying to find out! Good God, man, we're trying to do good science here!"

Ogden ended the argument without officially pulling rank. He simply glared at Sergeant James, and let five seconds of silence speak for itself. With no further protests, he turned to River. "Despite what you may have heard from Colonel Caldwell's contingent," he indicated Sergeant James with a nod, "it's not a malfunction in the device. We're certain it's a sensory anomaly, possibly something completely new. We've controlled for everything else."

River took a moment to assimilate as much of this barrage of information as she could. She quickly catalogued facts, updated her list of current assets, crushed an irritating swell of rising panic, and then turned and smiled condescendingly at Sergeant James. 

"Actually, I haven't been briefed on that yet," she said. 

Ogden gave a short sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Fantastic."


	2. Part 2

THIS REEL IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE  
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY

13 JUNE 1969  
14:25  
RECORD OF DETAINEE TRANSFER TO N.R.O. CUSTODY

PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES:  
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C  
OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J  
DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)

SECURITY DETAIL:  
JAMES, STAFF SERGEANT KEVIN J  
KELLEY, AIRMAN FRANK C  
LITZINGER, AIRMAN JOSHUA L

DETAINEE:  
DS-#234-8H ALIAS "DOCTOR"

GROOM LAKE FACILITY: INTERROGATION ROOM 3100A

[Colonel Caldwell is seated at the left side of the interrogation room table, his back to the two-way mirror taking up three fourths of the far wall from the door. He is leafing through documents in a manila folder. Major Ogden and Specialist Duvall are stood at the table to his right. Major Ogden holds a briefcase at his side. The detainee is escorted into the room by Sgt. James and two guards. The detainee appears clean-shaven and in good health but has some superficial scratches on his face and bruising under his right eye. He is restrained by a straight jacket, augmented at the waist with a multi-use leather transport belt with two handcuffs affixed to it.]

CALDWELL: Sit him down.

[The detainee does not resist when seated at the chair bolted to the floor at the right side of the table, facing Colonel Caldwell. He is flanked by the two guards, who secure the cuffs of the transport belt to two rings on the chair, located where the seat meets the back. Sgt. James affixes two straps attached to the front legs of the chair across each of the detainee's legs, then stands and salutes and is instructed to stand at ease.]

DETAINEE: Colonel Caldwell. I can't say I'm pleased to see you again.

[Major Ogden places the briefcase on the table and opens it briskly.]

OGDEN: Are all those restraints required?

[Specialist Duvall retrieves a flash camera from the briefcase and takes several pictures of the detainee during the ensuing conversation.]

CALDWELL: Major, I informed Security to use whatever means necessary for containing the prisoner.

OGDEN: Yes, sir. Understood. [To Sgt. James] Does that include roughing him up? 

JAMES: Sir, those injuries were sustained during the detainee's most recent escape attempt.

DETAINEE: To be precise, it was afterward--

DUVALL: Hold his head still.

[Airman Kelley stabilizes the detainee's head while Specialist Duvall focuses the camera on his injured eye and snaps a picture. The detainee grimaces at the flash and does not struggle, but blinks rapidly when his head is released.] 

OGDEN: Go on, Sergeant.

JAMES: The detainee was apprehended at the south perimeter, a quarter mile from the fence. Airman Chavez brought him down with a tranq, sir. He sustained the injuries from a fall onto rough terrain.

OGDEN: He got that shiner from a fall?

JAMES: Yes, sir.

[Specialist Duvall finishes with the camera and sets it on the table.]

DUVALL: What kind of tranquilizer was used?

JAMES: It was one of the adaptive rounds your agency sent.

DUVALL: Good.

DETAINEE: And what agency is that?

[Sgt. James takes a threatening step toward the detainee but is waved off by Major Ogden.]

OGDEN: Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all for now. Dismissed.

JAMES: Yes, sir. 

[James and the security detail salute and leave the room.]

CALDWELL: I'll see that they receive the proper security clearance compartment briefing to continue supporting your mission.

DUVALL: They should have had it already.

CALDWELL: With all due respect, they were busy making sure you didn't come all the way out here for nothing.

DETAINEE: Long trip, was it?

[Colonel Caldwell arranges the papers back into the file and signs the document at the top of the stack. Major Ogden signs as well, and nods to Specialist Duvall, who retrieves a thin electronic data pad from the briefcase and uses a stylus tool to turn it on and enter some settings.]

OGDEN: All right, gentlemen. The transfer is now official. 

DETAINEE: Transfer to whom? For what purpose? 

[Major Ogden removes a small, black, conical object from the case. The detainee's demeanor changes visibly from calm to nervous when he sees it. He straightens in the chair, rattling the cuffs against the metal supports. Specialist Duvall sets the data pad on the table facing the detainee and comes around to the far side of the table.]

DUVALL: Subject thirty-six is Air Force detainee two three four eight dash H. The subject has been categorized as an extra-terrestrial species with unknown origin, intent, and abilities.

DETAINEE: Origin--Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterberous. You won't have heard of it.

CALDWELL: What is that device? Does he recognize it? 

OGDEN: The device is based on xenotech, so he may have encountered something similar. [He holds the small black cone up to the light and addresses the detainee] Do you know what this is?

DETAINEE: At a guess I'd wager brutal, invasive and unnecessary. I know your sort. My intent--

[Major Ogden nods at Specialist Duvall, who forces the detainee's head forward, exposing his neck. The detainee starts to struggle but has little room to move and is held easily in position.]

DETAINEE: My intent right now is to avoid coming into contact with it!

OGDEN: You should also know that this will be less painful for you if you choose not to resist. 

[Specialist Duvall studies the data pad as Major Ogden places a finger on the base of the device and puts it point down against the detainee's neck. The device begins to emit a high-pitched whine.] 

DETAINEE: I'm not resisting. I'm telling you what you want to know. Origin, intent, abilities--abilities, well naturally I'm good at transcendental maths, football--ah, I suppose it's called soccer in America isn't it?--but don't ask about dancing; everyone tells me I'm rubbish at dancing--

DUVALL: Locked.

[Major Ogden releases the base of the device. The detainee stiffens and screams in pain as the cone unravels into a series of tiny wires that burrow down into the skin, until only the circular base is visible. It settles and the whining stops. The detainee stops screaming but stays bent forward in the chair, breathing heavily and spasming every few seconds. The data pad emits a quiet diagnostic ticking pulse. Specialist Duvall looks over at the data pad.]

DUVALL: It's calibrating. [To Colonel Caldwell] He'll be out of it for a little while until the branching stops. It usually takes about an hour for the SMM to map out regions of sensory input processing in the brain. More if there are any active abilities involved, tied to a perception like telepathy. 

CALDWELL: English, please. SMM? Was that covered in the SAP brief?

OGDEN: No, but it's need-to-know now for anyone in contact with the subject. Sensory Monitoring and Manipulation is the standard procedure for an uncatalogued xenobiological specimen in a possible foothold situation, mainly to protect against psychic threats. We'll soon get an idea of what kind of information he can interpret, and how to control it. 

CALDWELL: I see. Should we move him back to his cell?

OGDEN: Not yet. Brief your men. We can monitor him from the observation room next door until then.

CALDWELL: It's your show, gentlemen.

[Colonel Caldwell turns to leave.]

OGDEN: One more request, sir?

CALDWELL: What is it, Major?

OGDEN: I'd like to get a handcuff key from Sergeant James. I think we can do away with those restraints, now.

*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*

 

 

THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE: DIRECTORATE OF APPLIED EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL RESEARCH  
INTAKE REPORT: SUBJECT 36 ALIAS "DOCTOR"  
14 JUNE 1969  
AUTHOR: DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:  
Nearly twenty hours have elapsed since the Sensory Monitoring and Manipulation (SMM) device was implanted in the alien subject 36, and the perception map is not yet complete. The subject has been under constant surveillance but has not been observed tampering with any equipment, and the data feed from the device has remained uninterrupted and clear. 

Initial readings indicate higher than human acuity across the board in receptive senses with the common factor-analytic breakdown of vision, audition, tactician and olfaction/gustation. Observed conditional factor loadings (0.633, 0.205, 0.112, 0.050) across perceptive processing of these senses in the brain are similar to human subdivisions. The subject also has a low-level telepathic sense confounded with tactile input, and a dedicated set of locked empathic receptors associated with fixed, long-range psychic channeling. The subject's interoceptive senses are nearly as sophisticated as the external senses. Similar levels of internal acuity are seen in species that possess fine-tuned control of neurological and vascular systems, as a sense of vulnerability or harm in these systems informs the ability of consciously directed healing. 

Identification and suppression of any active telepathic communication vectors or interoceptive abilities that could interfere with the SMM functioning was achieved within nine hours of device implantation. Despite this, there are several peculiarities in the raw data feed that, at present, the SMM has been unable to disambiguate. We have detected anomalous signal fluctuations that occur simultaneously across all known and categorized perception vectors. If the readings are accurate, they suggest the presence of sensory receptors in the brain that we have yet to physically identify. We observe these "ghost receptors" through their interactions with categorized perceptions, but they may represent a new kind of sensory perception, independent from anything that has been observed in the past. 

Further research is imperative. Exploration of telepathic/empathic abilities in alien specimens has advanced our understanding of human perceptions considerably, and has opened the door to research in augmenting human senses to include these more sophisticated and alien perceptions. But if subject 36 is any indication of the broader spectrum of sense abilities, we have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible.

PLEASE SEE ATTACHED TECHNICAL NOTES FOR DETAILS

*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*

 

 

Six floors below ground, River sat back from the oval oak table in front of her, and let the weight of the empty conference room settle silently across her shoulders. High-backed, wheeled chairs, designed with the comfort of dignitaries in mind, stood out starkly black against the gray walls. Two flags hung in dead air against their poles at the front of the room--one recognizably the US stars and stripes, one an indistinct design on a blue background. Industrial lights shadowed the corners, failing to compensate for the lack of windows. 

Two months of hell were laid out before her, in technical reports, archive tapes, briefings and memos. She needed to process them quickly and impersonally, but the more she read, the more she realized that time was running short for her bluff. 

She closed her eyes. The room felt like a prison; dense, strange, and oppressive. The feeling wasn't tied to sights or sounds, and she couldn't imagine how much worse it felt for the Doctor. To think of him waiting in that cell for weeks on end for an ally, finally within arm's reach but shuttered off from her so completely--

"Doctor Hamilton. Ma'am?"

The world snapped back into focus, and River looked up to see Major Ogden at the doorway, his hands full with a large sheaf of papers. "Yes, what is it?" she asked. She couldn't hide the fatigue in her voice, but Ogden just gave her a quick, sympathetic smile. 

"It's a lot to go through, I know," he said, coming into the room. "Your clearance should have come through earlier so you could get a full off-site briefing. But I trust you're coming up to speed?"

"Just about." River collected the most recent documents she'd been studying and set them aside. 

"I see you've read the diagnostics reports. You're familiar with the basic xenotech?"

"Sontaran," she confirmed. "Though I must admit I'm more experienced with Rutan derivatives. Where did you get it?"

"That shuttle crash in Idaho in forty-seven. We thought the passengers were all Sontaran but it turns out it was a prisoner transport of Rutan infiltrators." 

"Shapeshifter spies," River surmised.

"Yes, Ma'am. From what we could tell, the SMM tech was used to sever the prisoners' connection to the Rutan Host and keep them in their current form. Took fifteen years to re-engineer the ones we salvaged. What's your assessment of its functioning?"

This was a delicate decision. She could try siding with James and the security personnel, and attempt to strong-arm the N.R.O. into deactivating and re-evaluating their device on security grounds. But it was increasingly clear from the reports that James' position was untenable, and the plan could backfire quickly if the N.R.O. decided they didn't need Groom Lake or its consultant anymore. Ogden and Duvall were the keys to getting close to the Doctor and to the SMM tech. On the one hand, it was easier to pass herself off as an expert if that expert happened to say the things the real experts wanted to hear. On the other hand, she had neither the expertise nor the time to play a long game. 

"I'd like to run some more field tests to confirm it," she said. "But from what you've documented here, the anomalies don't appear to be artifacts of a device malfunction." 

"That's what we've been trying to tell Command." Ogden used a foot to coax the chair beside her out from the table, depositing his sheaf of papers in front of them as he sat down. "I'll see about setting up some diagnostic sessions for you. Though," he sighed, "I hope for your sake you're not an opera fan."

"Pardon?" asked River, but Ogden had already moved past the point.

"Maybe Command will listen if it comes from their own people. In the meantime, if I may?" He unrolled an incongruously contemporary paper readout in front of them, given the common standards of alien tech River had seen so far, and pointed out several spikes in a grainy dot-matrix trend line. "What do you think about these readings? If you do a factor rotation, they fall out similar to what we see with telepathic projections, echolocation sonar, or other actions facilitated by passive senses. Doctor Duvall thinks it's possible we're dealing with an active ability tied to this new perception."

For a moment, River let her finger trace the trend, ignoring Ogden's commentary. What stimuli had created these patterns, she wondered. Was this jump due to probability or pain? Was the response confusion? Hope? Perhaps it was rage, inked across this sheet of paper as indelibly as it coursed through her veins. She chased the thought away with a cough and cleared her throat. Emotion wouldn't serve a rescue; she needed information. "You mean these aren't telepathy traces?" she asked innocently.

"No, those are here. Look." Ogden repositioned the readout, giving it a brusque shake to discourage wrinkles, and unrolled a new section. He pointed out a time series at the top of the readout. It was labeled "ESP#12C-LAMBDA-CTRL=-0.20", and the trace was a completely flat line. "The device forces telepathic eigenvalues to zero by default, along with any other active abilities that might interfere with its functioning. Touch-telepathy like what we see in this subject is harder to get a hold of, but previous studies have shown us how to disambiguate it from simple tactile and balance senses."

"I see," River said. The dormant psychic switch buzzed at the back of her mind. It needed a telepathic differential in order to activate. The only way she could get it past the facility's brainwave scanners was to bury it too deeply in her subconscious for her to retrieve it on her own. It would be completely useless to them if the Doctor couldn't feel how to transfer or trigger it. 

At her side, Ogden continued. "No, this activity is something different, and it's a startling volume of sensory input. I was hoping you might have some insights." 

River knew exactly what their sense maps were missing, of course.

Once, when she was much younger and more audacious than she was now, she had informed the Doctor that she had "a very well-developed sense of time." "I'm not just another companion you can summon to some galactic co-ordinates and then wait to show up whenever you damn well please!" she'd asserted, furious at him. The Doctor was not the gawky, bow-tie-clad youth who had clashed with her in Berlin, but it was nonetheless a familiar face from her University days. That incarnation was older but still ageless in a way, his gray hair and serious gaze offset by a penchant for flamboyant waistcoats. He was quicker to laugh--genuinely, laugh--than any incarnation she'd since known. Or, maybe she'd only seen it that way because he'd known her so well. But laugh he did. River glared at him and he busied his hands, smoothing dust from his clothes. Metallic purple silk adorned with silver yin-yang patterns flashed from beneath his dark jacket. He took her anger just as seriously, it seemed.

"A human--even you--informing me of their well-developed sense of time," he said. "It's like--it's like a lima bean informing you that it's gained an appreciation of the works of Shakespeare."

"I'm a lima bean, am I? I waited two weeks for you to show your face, and now I'm a lima bean?"

"In this respect? Well, yes, I'd say a legume is not far off." 

"And maybe this 'legume' has decided it doesn't need to spend the rest of its lifespan traipsing after you!" She stormed off toward the abandoned dig site, orange mud caking her workboots. "So just hop back into your box and sod off, if that's all you think I'm worth. I don't need either of you."

"River," he called, catching her stride. "That's not what I meant, and you know it. I'm not just some bloke who found himself a time machine and decided to take it for a jaunt, is all."

She whirled on him. "Really? Because sweetie, my research on your origins says otherwise. And don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, and don't say--"

"Spoilers?" He winked impishly and she hated him for a good ten seconds after that. He continued anyway. "You may have some residual capacity from your . . . origins. But I was born out of the ancient Looms of Gallifrey. Time sensitivity is literally woven into my genetic code. Gradient potentials, fixed points, temporal schisms, paradox, all of it. I can feel it as easily as you can see me or hear my voice. I can massage it, stretch it, flex it like a finger or an arm . . ." A frown ghosted across his features and he stopped short for a moment, but then dove back in before she could say a word. "There, you see what I mean? And of course you don't, blasted repeats! Anyway, the point is, you can't waltz up to a Time Lord, tell them you understand the fabric of their being better than they do, and--" He took a breath, finally noticing the tightness in her jaw for what it really was. "And, and, and. . . and I'm sorry. I did try to come sooner."

"Try harder," she said, fighting to hold on to her anger. She'd killed him and saved him already, this man whose faces she hardly knew, and she was still learning the lessons of Rule One. "I thought . . . whatever's gone before, time can be rewritten. I thought you'd left me behind."

"I wouldn't ever, not after--hang on," he said, scrutinizing her face with a furrowed brow. "Are you still at university? So we haven't--oh, never mind. Shall we go?" He waved airily and set off for the TARDIS on nimble feet, navigating the muddy ground with ease and not bothering to look back as he called out, "We'll have to make a quick stopover before Bessa Prime; I've an appointment to keep!" 

Of course, she had followed. She always would. 

River looked up from the readout to focus on Major Ogden's hopeful expression. She figured she had less than two days before her cover was blown, leaving her in as much need of rescuing from this man as the Doctor was. 

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm as much in the dark as you are," she lied. 

For all their xeno-technology and scientific method, the National Reconnaissance Office's Directorate of Applied Extra-Terrestrial Research were still legumes when it came to understanding a Time Lord's perception of time. 

 

 

THIS REEL IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE OFFICE: DIRECTORATE OF APPLIED EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL RESEARCH  
SUPPLEMENTAL EVIDENCE FOR DATA ANALYSIS DELAYS: SUBJECT 36 ALIAS "DOCTOR"  
FILM ARCHIVED BY DUVALL, HENRY M (SPECIALIST)

21 JUNE 1969  
17:25

AREA 51 EAST LABORATORY

[The laboratory is brightly lit, dominated by a high-backed metallic chair that is currently adjusted to a seated position. Several experimental devices are positioned on swivel-arms about the chair, but none appear to be in use. The recording is taken from behind an observation window, showing the chair side on. The subject is seated in the chair, restrained by the wrists and ankles to its arms and legs. His head is strapped to a stabilizing support extending up from the top of the chair, leaving the SMM device at back of his neck accessible. His eyes are closed and he looks exhausted, but he appears to be murmuring something softly under his breath.] 

OGDEN (off camera): Italian again?

[A hand (Specialist Duvall, who is holding the camera) reaches out to flick a switch at the wall, and sound from the next room is piped in through an intercom. The subject is humming to himself, not entirely on key, interspersed with a few vague words and phrases.]

DUVALL (oc): German, I think. Anyway, it's mapped for now. It shouldn't confound the visual baseline.

OGDEN (oc): Are the inputs ready?

[The camera pans down, showing the SMM data screen. Stacked time series charts scroll jumpy lines of green readings across the window. Specialist Duvall reaches down with a plastic stylus to tap the screen. One line of what looks like a basic white noise pattern thickens and turns red.]

DUVALL (oc): Ready.

OGDEN (oc): Begin visual baselining.

[Another tap of the screen sets the red line from a noisy time series to a smoother series of stair-step patterns. The camera pans quickly back up to the subject. He has squeezed his eyes shut tightly and starts singing louder and more forcefully-- _O welche Lust in freier Luft . . . in freier Luft, Den Athem einzuheben!_ \--apparently trying to distract himself from some level of discomfort.]

OGDEN (oc): No good. The signal's still confounded. Variance is point-seven-five.

DUVALL (oc): Fascinating. What the hell else is he seeing?--Wait! 

[The camera pans with a quick movement to Major Ogden, who has picked up the data pad and is striding purposefully into the main laboratory.]

DUVALL (oc): You're going to contaminate the perception feeds!

OGDEN: They're already contaminated! I'm going to find out why.

[The camera follows Major Ogden as he rounds the front of the chair. The subject stops singing and tries to move his head to follow the sound of Ogden's footsteps. His eyes remain closed but he smiles grimly when Ogden stops in front of him.]

SUBJECT: Hello--well, I never did get your names, did I? Not fans of Beethoven? That's a shame, Beethoven is cool. Or maybe you object to the subject matter.

OGDEN: Have you had enough?

SUBJECT: What's that? Have you decided to talk to me? It's rather difficult to concentrate with all these test patterns flashing across my visual cortex. 

[Major Ogden discontinues the baseline pattern on the data pad, and then reaches up and unstraps the subject's forehead. He rolls his head and blinks his eyes, focusing quickly in on Major Ogden.]

OGDEN: You've been in this chair for eight hours straight. You've been awake for five days. Don't you want to take a rest?

SUBJECT: Oh, yes. I've tried. A healing trance would be best, but your little torture device won't let me do that. 

OGDEN: We can relax the controls, if you co-operate. 

SUBJECT: Co-operate? With you?

OGDEN: Your sensory input is confounded in ways we've never seen before. Give us some context for the data we're seeing. You can make this process easier for both sides.

[The subject gives a short laugh and leans his head back against the chair.]

SUBJECT: I could easily lie.

[The view jitters as the camera is repositioned.]

DUVALL (oc): With all due respect, Major Ogden, this is getting us nowhere.

[Major Ogden continues to address the subject.]

OGDEN: We can easily test your assertions empirically. Just tell us what we're missing. Otherwise, we could be here for weeks. We might damage you unknowingly. 

[The subject suddenly sits forward, eyes intent at the camera and directing his statement to Specialist Duvall.] 

SUBJECT: You wouldn't allow that to happen, of course. Pain, surely. Humiliation. But not damage.

DUVALL (oc): Major, this is costing us time. Look at the current readings; are they even significant at point zero five anymore? Point one? We've already spent five--

[The subject tugs at the restraints on his wrist in an abortive attempt to raise a hand.]

SUBJECT: Five days. I've gone through three and a half librettos, I'm so bored. But you're not bored, are you? Quite the opposite. Five days of impeccable experiments, precise procedure, and flawless documentation. You know, I once spent an entire decade nearly bored to tears--a long time ago now, and of course they changed the requirements for philosophy of non-interference seminars for the following cohort, lucky devils--but it didn't make me pedantic; it made me sloppy. And you? You're just getting started. It's against your nature to break something before you've figured it out. 

OGDEN: If we can't baseline your mapped perceptions, the next step is to shut them all down.

[The subject ignores Major Ogden and continues to address Duvall.]

SUBJECT: And what happens to the riddles you finally unravel? Are they worth nearly as much to you, I wonder?

OGDEN: Total sensory isolation. Nobody wants that. I think you'll find it's in your best interest to co-operate. 

[The subject turns to face Major Ogden.]

SUBJECT: Do you think so? Do you want to know what I think?

OGDEN: I'm giving you fair warning--

SUBJECT: I think it's in my best interest to remain unsolved.

[The subject sits back and starts softly humming bars of Beethoven again. The camera jostles, taking the subject out of frame and then is abruptly turned off.]

*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*


	3. Interlude I

It was important to keep talking. 

Certainly, in this instance, no one could accuse him of being in love with the sound of his own voice, and anyway he wouldn't hear them even if they did. Since the second week after they'd forced their neurological vise on him, the Doctor's world had consisted of nothing but hands and likelihoods. Hands--pushing, prodding, grabbing, hitting, strapping him down. Hands forcing feeding tubes down his throat. Hands turning his head this way and that, hands examining his eyes and ears. Hands injecting him with chemicals--though that hadn't lasted. The tendrils seizing his brain refused to let his body metabolize their "adaptive" drugs any longer, a fact they'd learned when they tried to give him something for the pain after the isolation procedure. He spent a day so dizzy and sick in the aftermath, it was all he could do to find the loo in the corner of his cell and keep himself right side up and heaving into it. 

After that, they left him be and didn't bother with anything beyond the essentials. Hands--male hands, soldiers' hands--gave him a change of clothes every other day. He couldn't smell the difference but he didn't fight them on it. They had tried using restraint and force at first to dress him, but one accidental knock to the back of his neck had been enough to instill some caution, on both sides. Now they merely handed him the thin fabric and let him work it out on his own. It wasn't much of a concession, but it was the only routine they put him through that didn't leave him feeling utterly violated afterward. It reminded him that those hands were connected to human beings. So he kept talking to them.

He desperately missed the TARDIS. Their psychic link, already tenuous from fatigue and uncertainty, had been the first thing to go when the vise took hold. She didn’t feel the initial spasms wracking his body in the interrogation room, but she recognized a manufactured intruder and its intent. At first, she was merely amused. _This puny, stupid little drone in your brain wants to separate us_ —he translated the the oblique images and sensations into more structured concepts as clearly as ever, but then the machine bit into him, needles branching and converging. Thoughts turned quickly to alarm and anger, redoubled and reverberating as though from both their minds at once. _This blind, deaf, dumb thing that understands nothing but the bit streams and crude estimations fed to it! How dare it! How--_ and that was that. TARDIS, gone. Telepathy, gone. Then it set its sights on his internal perceptions. He tried to re-route the neural pathways it was targeting, but when the machine was through fighting back, he was blind to anything going on under his skin beyond simple pain responses. 

A week of dreary experiments went by before the agency men finally realized that they had never really wanted to get to know him, and sent him the rest of the way into the black. But he kept talking anyway.

To a mind starved for input, spoken language was now an exercise in memory and precision. Consonants--ejective, fricative, dental. Alveolar versus palatal voiced implosives. Glottal stops. Cardinal vowels--front, centre or back of the throat; rounded tone or flat. Modulated volume and cadence. Speaking was one thing he could still easily control, but more than that, it reminded his captors that their test subject was an independent, sentient being, and not simply another piece of laboratory equipment. It acclimated them to the sound of his voice. It kept them guessing. 

He didn't talk to himself, but when he knew they were listening, he spoke to them. He paid close attention to any reactions. Speech was a wide net cast into a murky ocean, but like a net it had weight to it, and he didn't always come away empty-handed. He reserved the singing for when he knew they could hear him, but chose not to listen. When he was immobilized, a thousand questing needle points flexing their grip on his brain and waiting for the smallest bit of information to direct them deeper, he did his best to concentrate, remember most of the words, and stay roughly in tune. They could take and take and take, or at least they could try; all he would ever give them were words and a few simple tunes.

He was so tired. It took effort to sort through the confusion of disassociated time sensitivity. In those first few terrifying hours post isolation, he could hardly distinguish inanimate from animate timelines. But by necessity, he was learning. Now he could sense the humans around him as bundles of linear history and change-point potential. He could pick them out from the static newness of concrete walls, and he could tell which ones were older and which ones were younger than the surrounding prison. He couldn't hear their words but he could feel their speech as the _pa-pa-pop_ of realized decisions that emerged from the structure of the past, and subtly re-weighted future possibilities. 

His temporal grasp of these histories was weak at best, as it always was for events so ensconced in normal, linear timelines. Paradox and schism were the footholds for any directed control of the fabric of time, and neither were present in great enough quantity to give him a good grip on anything. In fact, this place was so dull in regards to jump-tracked timelines and the like that when they finally did show up, he had absolutely no idea what he was sensing. Consequently, it took him a full fifteen seconds to identify the timey-wimey, nonlinear ball of faint paradox and ridiculous potential assaulting his time sense as River Song, standing at the door of his cell.

He couldn't help but smile. Oh, sweetie! What a sight for sore eyes! Figuratively speaking, of course. 

As expected, they roughed him up after he let her know he recognized her. He felt her come to his aid but her immediate potential was focused and peaked and very, very cautious. Whatever she was playing at, she had few options and little room for error. 

So it was back to waiting, he figured, letting himself be led meekly out the door. God, he was so _terrible_ at waiting. 

He drummed relentless fingers against the pads of his thumbs as River's time echo faded in the distance. The vise itched and stung like a metal biting fly at the back of his neck and he wanted to swat it away, right now. Half-way down the corridor his concentration failed; he stumbled, lightheaded and reeling, and was caught at the elbows by the strong hands of the military guard. When they stopped to badge through the double doors of the corridor leading out to the laboratory, he steeled his nerves, and went back to a familiar routine in the rumbling vibrations of speech.

_"Haydn? I think I've gone through all of his already. Mozart? Too flighty. Gluck? Gluck is cool . . . "_

The sigh from the soldier holding his left arm was so faint he almost missed it. It was just a breath at his ear, coupled with a bit of eased tension in the grasp on his elbow. No words, but there was a re-posturing of resigned disappointment that the Doctor reconstructed in his mind and recognized instantly from the many times he'd seen similar reactions. _Old man,_ it said, _that will never be cool._

The Doctor cocked his head, reading his escort for a moment. His brief past was a pendulum swinging wildly between regimentation and pure chemical abandon. His uncertain future was converging all too swiftly around the expectation of violence and war: a dim, cloying likelihood like the pulsing _thrum_ of military helicopters in dense, hot air. He was so, so young.

 _"Fine, have it your way,"_ he decided. _"Anyway I suppose it's time for a change of pace."_

They took up the gallows walk again, and the Doctor belted out a new tune at what he was quite sure was the top of his lungs.

_"In the t-o-o-own, where I was born!_  
_Lived a m-a-a-an, who sailed to sea!_  
_And he t-o-o-old us of his life!_  
_In the l-a-a-and of submarines . . ."_


	4. Part 3

_Lab Record: 03 August 1969_

_Response perception: location_  
_Blocking variables: electromagnetic fields_  
_Confounding mapped vectors: aural, visual, tactile_  
_Total Observations: 150_

_Exploratory Analysis:_

**Variable** | **Estimate** | **StdErr** | **T** | **Pr( >|t|)**  
---|---|---|---|---  
Intercept | 12.450 | 4.050 | 3.074 |  0.003  
distance (m) |  0.132  |  0.233 | 0.567 | 0.572  
flux (T) |  -4.431  |  3.764  | -1.178  | 0.241   
charge (C) |  6.350  |  3.890  | 1.632  | 0.105  
  
_ANOVA:_

**Source** | **DF** |  **SS** | **MS** | **F** | **Pr( > f)**  
---|---|---|---|---|---  
Regression | 3 | 1038.4 | 346.1 | 0.954  | 0.595  
Residual Error | 146 | 79982.2 | 547.8 |   
Total | 149 | 81020.6 |  |   
  
_**Correlation coefficient: 0.08  
SMM Feedback: No relationship of stimulus to measured sensory response** _

_Notes: Acquisitions finally approved for the variable field generator. SMM confounded signals were correlated against strength and distance of EM fields using this electromagnetic source at various positions relative to the subject's orientation, in an attempt to construct a manual baseline for any EM sensitivity in the unmapped perceptions. This tests the working hypothesis that the subject's ability to locate certain objects and to distinguish human movement without sight or hearing is based upon sensing differentials and fluctuations in EM fields._

_A weak relationship to electrostatic charge of the EM field is explained by tactile confounding at close range. However, the SMM device found no sensory channels whose differentials correlated with the manual EM baseline at larger distances, indicating that the subject could not distinguish any differences in position, charge or flux of the test field. The subject continues to show perception of location uncorrelated with any other measured stimulus, and the SMM device still has found no model or control mechanism for this ability._

_Ability to distinguish location of humans and movement could be due partially to vibrational cues, although there is some dulling of afferent neurons as an effect of the touch-telepathy mitigation: minor but measurable decreased awareness of hot/cold, sharp/blunt, most likely also resulting in a slight dampening of sense of source location or direction of vibrations. Another confounding factor could be increasing awareness of surroundings and routines in the laboratory, cells, and corridors. However the subject was also able to identify a new element in the environment (AF consultant Doctor Sarah Hamilton: see cell surveillance at 02 Aug 1969 0935 hours) and somehow discern female features (?)._

_Could this perception be linked to a new kind of empathic ability? Doctor Ogden and Doctor Hamilton seem to think so. I am not convinced. Empathic perception in this subject seems tightly coupled to the long-range channeling ability that has been suppressed nearly since device implantation. Ghost receptors resonating along typical empathic channels (120 to 135) display more regularity than most empathic senses I've seen, and generally appear as secondary indicators of confounding across other more prominent receptive senses. Something empathic by way of interpretation, but grounded more strongly in physical constraints?_  
_-H.D._

 

 

Sunrise washed out the blue sky behind the northeastern hills, turning pink cirrus clouds into bright silver streaks in the high atmosphere. Far below, River climbed a metal access ladder, her breath misting in the morning air. She wasn't cleared to visit the airfield control tower, but several soldiers had pointed her here, to the roof of Building 18--or "Red Square Terrace" as it was known among the ranks--to get a look around. The two-story building was constructed as a pipe housing and pumping facility for the water tower, located half-way up the steep hills of the base's western perimeter. Beyond the ladder, the concrete rooftop was bare except for a scattering of white plastic lawn chairs and a few flimsy tables set with ashtrays still waterlogged from the thunderstorms the night before. The only thing it had going for it was the view. 

"Thumb your nose at the Russians when they take your picture," a lanky private had instructed her, arcing the path of an invisible satellite overhead with a finger. "Show them what a good time you're having in this desert resort." 

A good time. River swallowed a mirthless laugh, refusing to let forty-eight hours of sleeplessness turn her frustration into giddiness. She pulled an elastic band from a pocket in her camouflage BDU trousers and corralled her hair into a bun, taking stock of the situation beneath the open sky.

She had held out hope for Plan A--get to the Doctor, hope he could feel enough of the psychic switch to recognize and trigger it--through mid-afternoon of her first day. Even as her mind raced to develop contingency plans after the morning's blitz of information, she couldn't ignore the fact that the Doctor was generally good at undermining neural devices, no matter what the readouts said. The examination room wasn't ideal, but it would be defensible for the few seconds they would have to wait for the TARDIS to materialize. So she shadowed the scientists during their afternoon laboratory session for an opportunity to get close enough for a telepathic transfer.

She spent two hours in that cramped observation room before getting her chance. Two hours watching the Doctor endure test after tedious test gauging his sensory response to everything from tones to temperature differentials. Strapped to the upright examination chair, forced awake from a persistent signal through the SMM machinery, he kept his expression guarded throughout; sometimes he would furrow his brow or smile grimly to himself but never for long, and if his eyes started wandering he closed them and resolutely re-focused his concentration on whatever tune he was humming, the mouthed words gaining sound and substance. He hid pain well; he always could when he wanted to. But River could see his hands flinch against the wrist restraints every time the device at the back of his neck was fed new information. 

The worst part was knowing that through it all, he could feel her presence only a few feet away. He barely trusted her in these early days; what must he think of her now, she had wondered? 

When Major Ogden finally asked for her assistance re-setting a baseline, she was so defensively disassociated from her own senses that she nearly didn't acknowledge him at all. As it was, she responded by rote with an empty affirmative, and pushed her way numbly through the connecting door leading into the examination room. 

The guards were positioned outside the main door in the corridor, so River and the Doctor were as close to isolated as they could come. He was singing a soft string of nonsense tiredly to himself as she approached, that meandered around a familiar tune. _"Her name was Magill, she called herself Lil, But everyone knew her as--"_. He stopped when she pretended to check the strap holding his head in place and discreetly brushed her finger in a clockwise circle across his temple. It was a polite request he'd taught her ages ago, widely understood among touch-telepaths as _"Can I come in?"_ All she felt in return was the blunt warmth of skin on skin.

"Shuttered like a shop on Christmas," the Doctor sighed aloud, then screwed his eyes shut tight when River quickly pulled her fingers away in alarm, flicking her gaze to the observation window to gauge any reaction. "Don't worry, sweetie!" he announced into the room. "They'll tell you, I talk to everybody, don't I? They keep track of it, of course, but for all their records I don't think they're very good listeners." 

"No need to be concerned about the vocalizations," Duvall's voice came over the grainy intercom. "We know which channels they show up on and can factor them out. We just need the orientation reading for tomorrow's location tests. Reset to one-hundred thirty five degrees."

Trying to quell her shaking hands, River dutifully repositioned the chair, leaning the Doctor slowly back forty-five degrees from his upright position. As she started moving him, the device at his neck started to whine.

"I'll just bet," he said through quick breaths, "they use some ostentatious technical term like 'verbalize' in their reports. Especially the one in charge, no not the one with the rank--the other one, the real one in charge, the short one. He seems the type for it, doesn't he? Oh sweetie, what's your game with them? What's a nice girl like you doing amongst the rabble? Ah--" 

He was talking too fast and slurring his speech, pain and exhaustion sapping his concentration. River tried to touch his temple again, to establish any kind of connection to him but he obviously couldn't feel it telepathically, and the psychic switch didn't budge. His words cut off as the machine reached a crescendo. She chanced a look at the observation room and when she saw both scientists engrossed in the data pad readouts for whatever information this obscene exercise could possibly be giving them, she abandoned any attempt at psychic transfer and just squeezed his hand, hoping the fleeting contact could somehow help them both get through this. His cold fingers were tense and unyielding in her grip.

"Orientation baseline established." This time it was Ogden on the comm. "Thanks for the help."

The device shut down with an impassive beep and the Doctor inhaled a sharp gasp of breath, then huffed out a relieved sigh. Three seconds later his breathing had stabilized to a semblance of calm, and he was drumming his fingers in a slow beat against the chair, murmuring nearly tunelessly again. River only caught a few words as she retreated back to the observation room-- _"That is you can't, you know, tune in but it's all right. That is, I think it's not too bad..."_ Then she politely excused herself, spent a quiet half hour shaking in her quarters, and hashed out the details of Plan B: release the hold of that horror on the back of his neck to the point where the Doctor could feel either River's telepathic contact or that from the TARDIS, and revert to Plan A. 

The data pad was kept at the security desk and could only be checked out to one of the N.R.O. scientists. River could nick it easily enough, she figured, but the briefings she had read were short on technical details for working it in reverse. She would have to learn more from one of the experts.

"Out of the question," had been Duvall's response the following day. He didn't bother looking up from the readouts spread across the two folding tables comprising the makeshift workspace in the records room. River exchanged a glance with Major Ogden, who pressed the issue. 

"It's a sound theory," he supplied. "We only logged empathic readings from the subject for the first hour of calibration, before we knew what to look for in the confounding variables. We can relax the SMM isolation back to normal channels to get more data. If the main unmapped component is empathic we should be able to establish an active baseline and--"

"I thought we had agreed the confounding on those channels wasn't empathic," Duvall interrupted.

Ogden nervously steepled his fingers. "I've been relating my theory to Doctor Hamilton, and she thinks it's worth pursuing."

"Do you really want to put everything else on hold for that?" Duvall flipped open his spiral bound notebook and reached for a pen. "The filaments branched eighty-three times in order to reach isolation. We've never had a subject go higher than twenty before. Even at three hours per layer for extraction we're looking at four days before any measurable activity can get through on those channels. Why don't we try some more traditional tests first?"

"Four days," River echoed. She didn't have four days.

"At three hours per layer," Duvall reiterated. "Any faster than that and you know we're looking at severe neurological damage. I'd really like to keep this subject intact"--his eyes traveled back to the readouts and he marked three spots with red ink before capping his pen and looking pointedly at Major Ogden--"and not waste Van Statten Industries' valuable time."

Plan B, River had decided then, needed to be re-evaluated.

Sunlight crept across Red Square Terrace and River focused her attention outward again, looking over corrugated hangar rooftops to the designed geometric chaos of criss-crossing airstrip runways at the base's eastern perimeter. Coarse scrubland stretched for nearly ten miles past the runways across a natural basin to the steeper foothills, where even the parallel tire-track suggestions of roads disappeared, except for one. A single narrow pass, its tamped gravel tracks sure to be patrolled, wound up from the basin's northeastern corner through nearly the steepest section of hills to the open desert of the next valley. 

To the north, past the helipad and the neat rows of airfield logistic vehicles, the desolate dry lake bed that gave Groom Lake its name sat like a pocked scar on the landscape. The runways crossing Groom Lake's six square miles were used for test flights; they were more ephemeral than the eastern airstrip, defined in the packed pale dirt only by straight lines of running lights set between outposts of modular trailers and vehicles. A road skirted the western edge of the lake bed, nestled between it and a narrow corridor of outlying buildings in the shadow of the water tower. That road spun north ten miles, River knew, before ending at a dry riverbed that angled northwest through rough desert terrain for another twenty miles before intersecting the highway.

It was forty miles in a straight shot to the TARDIS along the northeastern pass; it was double that to go northwest and avoid a sure blockade at the narrow bottleneck. In ten daily escape attempts prior to his vicious sensory blindfolding, the Doctor had made it past the initial base perimeter to the scrubland only once, where he'd been caught by vehicular patrols. 

A stiff breeze whipped up over the rooftop, toppling one of the lawn chairs with a clatter. River took a deep breath and stood her ground, hands clenching to fists at her side. Already this morning, the duty guard at the N.R.O. checkpoint had mentioned some kind of glitch in her clearance records. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was routine.

Plan C was to run for it.


	5. Part 4

_  
Lab Record: 04 August 1969_

_Response perception: intent preconception_  
_Blocking variables: Human vs. automated, randomized time intervals_  
_Confounding mapped perceptions: empathic, tactile_  
_Total Observations: 150_

_Exploratory Analysis:  
Point of Initiation (baseline human, differential):_

**Variable** |  **Estimate** |  **StdErr** |  **T** | **Pr( >|t|)**  
---|---|---|---|---  
T(response - signal) (s)  | 0.021 | 0.005 | 4.200 |  0.000  
automated |  -0.442  |  1.764  | -1.178  | 0.803   
  
_**Correlation coefficient (active response): 0.92  
Strong relationship of stimulus across blocking variables to active response** _

_**Correlation coefficient (confounded empathic channels): 0.35**_  
_**SMM Feedback: Weak relationship across blocking variables to measured empathic sensory channels**_  


_Intent accuracy (logistic link, baseline neutral human):_

**Variable** | **Estimate** | **StdErr** |  **Z** | **Pr( >|z|)**  
---|---|---|---|---  
Intercept | -0.023 | 0.028 | 0.821 | 0.411  
Negative reinforcement  | 0.019 | 0.016 | 1.188 | 0.234  
Negative reinforcement * automated  | -0.006 | 0.005 | 1.200 | 0.230  
  
_**Odds ratio (accuracy neutral/negative, human): 1.019**_  
_**Odds ratio (accuracy neutral/negative, automated): 1.013**_  
_**No relationship of active response to application of negative reinforcement**_

_**SMM Feedback: No relationship of stimulus to measured empathic sensory channels** _

_Notes: Negative reinforcement for this experiment was moderate electric shocks administered through SMM contact point. Following the experiments of Kettridge (1963):_

_Subject is co-located with an administrator for the duration of the experiment. Blind to the subject, at randomly spaced intervals the administrator is given a directive, A or B, pertaining to a handheld device that controls negative reinforcement. The administrator is instructed to push either button A (labeled "neutral") or button B (labeled "shock"), at a delay of two seconds after receiving the signal. Default probability of label selection for the randomized signal is 0.5._

_With no other sensory cues, a subject with traditional empathic perception can determine the moment when the administrator receives and understands the signal (the point of initiation), and will quickly distinguish the intent (negative or neutral) from the administrator's projected response to the cue. Perception can be measured via empathic SMM maps or via directly observable action--the subject involuntarily anticipates the shock when negative reinforcement is selected, and relaxes when neutral action is selected. This basic empathic ability persists across differential sensory expressions of empathy and in highly unbalanced administration profiles (p >> 0.5, p << 0.5). _

_Empathic subjects can determine neither point of initiation nor intent when the decision process is automated by a switch wired on delay to a computerized random number generator, as opposed to a human administrator._

_In curious contrast to traditional empathic perception, subject 36 was able to determine the point of initiation in both human-administered and automated tests. Furthermore, directly observable involuntary response showed that while the subject could always anticipate a decision being made, the subject could not determine intent (negative vs neutral) under either experimental condition, and anticipated shock whether or not it was applied. SMM empathic channels were largely uncorrelated with any of these measured responses. This result again suggests that the subject's unmapped senses are not strongly tied to empathy, and that the confounding along empathic channels is merely the footprint of a different kind of sensory input._

_These empathic perception channels continue to defy explanation. For example, the aural/empathic confounded spike (66.54 +/- 9.23 mE above background noise on channel 120.8), that has accompanied the subject's vocal attempts at self-placation during times of high stress since the inception of monitoring, has disappeared completely and abruptly from the channel for all instances occurring on or after 02 August. These "singing spikes" were some of our most steady readings. What happened?_

 

 

They had a good shot if they could make it to the surface, River figured. She set Plan C into motion late that afternoon, heading purposefully for the elevator bay and the wing of offices one floor up from the laboratory. 

The subterranean base was modular, which meant that many of the features within the N.R.O. perimeter mirrored ones in the traditional security wing. According to Sergeant James' meticulous reports, the Doctor had used a pipe access cabinet in escape attempt number nine that bypassed the elevators and connected with maintenance corridors leading to the mess on sub-level two. James had locked the panel and set a guard at the entrance in the security wing after that, but once the Doctor was transferred, Major Ogden hadn't bothered to secure the same area at the far end of the laboratory corridors within his jurisdiction. As an added advantage, the Doctor was already familiar with the route, and even blind, his spatial orientation was top notch. It wouldn't take him long to remember his previous attempt and retrieve his mental map in order to help him get his bearings.

She hoped. The elevator door closed. River jabbed the button for sub-level 5, and let a wave of anxiety wash over her. 

She would have precious little time to try to communicate with him. He had never taught her a manual alphabet and she wasn't sure what standard he would know, nor how best to study up on one quickly. Instead, she had swiped an introductory Morse Code training card from the comms center the previous afternoon and had committed the dots and dashes to memory. She'd never seen the Doctor use it before, but it was a classic example of human ingenuity--simple, archaic, and brilliant--which meant there was a good chance he would already know it. It might buy them some time.

She hadn't seen the Doctor in over a day. It was necessary, but she hated the fact that running away from him had been easier than staying by his side. He had survived for two months--of course he had; he always survived--and she knew he could fend for himself for a while longer as she planned their jailbreak. But doubt ate at her. River trusted the Doctor with all of her heart, but she knew he wasn't as unbreakable as he'd like either friends or enemies to believe. Was this the time she expected too much from him? 

The elevator doors calmly slid open at Level 5 and River forced herself to start moving. There was no denying they would need as much of a head start as they could gain in order to make it to the surface. Which meant changing routines to foster confusion, overpowering a minimum number of people as quickly and quietly as possible, and minimizing time spent under the eyes of the surveillance cameras. 

She found Major Ogden in the records room, cross-referencing readouts to audio tapes. He looked up wearily and clicked off the tape player when she came in.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

Quite a bit, she thought. 

"I've been called back to Utah," she said. "I'm heading out on the seven A.M. transport tomorrow morning."

Ogden removed his thick-rimmed glasses and rubbed at his eyes, his disappointment clear. "I was hoping to get your help testing those alternative empathic hypotheses we discussed," he said.

"I'm sorry. Doctor Duvall can--" she started, but the Major cut off her comment with a wave of his hand. 

"I don't think he's interested," was all he said.

The key to exploiting human assets, River had learned long ago, was to focus their attention on their own insecurities. It was the best lever you could use to cause mis-steps and mistakes. It was something the Doctor understood well, but depending on the face he wore, he would generally start out trying to be nice. River had never mastered that level of patience. She may have misjudged the situation upon her arrival, but now she knew exactly where her assets lay--with a passionately scientific military man who wasn't used to playing second fiddle to anyone, but who wasn't quite sure if his field ops pedigree was good enough to earn true respect from a specialist from the premiere national laboratories.

River smiled sympathetically at Major Ogden. Getting a good head start meant staging their escape from the examination room, where the only cameras were the ones in the adjoining observation room, and where the ever-present scientific and military escorts were divided among that room and the outer corridor. 

"Well, we don't have to bother Doctor Duvall about it, do we?" she said. "How long would it take to run the tests now?" 

 

 

_What has changed? The subject's routine, mood and demeanor have stayed constant; suggesting that any internal calming effects gained from this exercise have also stayed constant despite the pseudo-empathic drop. Language choice--French, German, Italian, now English--has had no correlation with spike magnitude in the past, nor has tempo, length, volume, precision or recollection (though the latter two can contribute to delay of spike onset). The only obvious difference is that the subject has abandoned operas for what I assume are_

Henry Duvall blinked down at his own handwriting, pen poised. 

"But that's a construct," he said into his empty office. "It can't . . . it's not--"

He shoved notebook and pen quickly aside in favor of vigorously unfurling the afternoon's data readouts across his desk and peering myopically at the background noise on channel 120.8. Was it really background noise? And what was that soldier's name, the one who he'd heard humming the same tune at his post later in the day . . .

He snatched the readout up into an untidy accordion of creases and folds under one arm, crammed the notebook alongside as an afterthought, and pushed his way emphatically through the office door into the anteroom.

"Page Airman Kelley to the records room," he said to the startled soldier on afternoon desk duty. "And find me an encyclopedia!" he added a moment later, pausing at the corridor doorway only long enough to see the kid pick up the desk phone and give a distracted thumbs up in acknowledgement.

 

 

It was nearing six o'clock when they reached the cells. The timing was no accident; River had indulged Ogden's need for some preparation time, had done some preparation of her own, and then had dragged her feet until the time was right. Now, the security detail was at a lull, and there was only one guard with them, a small but thickset Hispanic man with hard eyes and the name CARILLO stenciled across the pocket on his BDUs. He was just coming on to his shift, and this was likely the first time it had involved anything other than monitoring the Doctor's locked cell. Ogden keyed the cell code and the airman peered past the opening door, shifting his stance from foot to foot. 

"Nervous?" asked River.

"Yes Ma'm, I almost never even seen him move," he answered. "They say he reads minds."

"Not right now, he doesn't," said Major Ogden. "Settle down, Airman."

The Doctor was on the bunk when they entered, his eyes closed, his arms folded across his upper body which was propped against the corner wall, his legs stretched out over the sheets and crossed at the ankles. He didn't so much as twitch when they entered. It took River too long to realize why; he found it too painful to lie flat, but even he needed to sleep from time to time. She started to warn Major Ogden, but by then Carillo had already grabbed the Doctor's near hand, with the intent of cuffing him for the trip to the lab. 

The Doctor started awake with a gasp, bending his knees and pushing himself back toward the corner, his hands reflexively searching for purchase against the walls. He slammed Carillo's knuckles against the concrete and the airman let out an explosive curse. In two seconds flat the stronger soldier had hauled the Doctor off the bunk onto his shins, the offending hand twisted up behind his back and a knee thrust down between his shoulder blades, pinning him to the floor. 

"Easy!" Ogden boomed as the Doctor roared a cry of fear and frustration, his eyes shut tight against complete disorientation. And for one bare, furious second, River abandoned her plan. They didn't need the examination room. They didn't need stealth; she could take on the guard and Ogden right here, commandeer a weapon and blaze their way out, cameras be damned. With Ogden barking orders and Carillo threatening to break the Doctor's arm, she surged forward into the cell.

"What? What, River--no!" The Doctor lifted his head as much as he could. "No, no, no, calm down!" he shouted, awake but not fully aware. His eyes nearly focused on her, imploring her to stop, and River froze. She saw the moment he realized his slip--a split second of terror writ across his face before he forced his head down again. He got a knee ground into his spine in response, positioned dangerously close to the device on his neck. His next words were rushed and imprecise. "I'm not resisting! No violence!"

She heard a questioning "Sir?" from behind her and turned to see the cell block guard standing warily in the doorway, his rifle not yet aimed but at the ready. She had completely forgotten about him. They would have walked right into him if River had tried anything.

"Enough," Ogden ordered, dismissing the guard at the door with a wave and then turning to Carillo. "That prisoner's worth more than you are. Follow the protocol for God's sake, so you don't damage him."

"Hands off!" the Doctor slurred, and Carillo reluctantly loosened his grip. "Let me up, _let me up_ , I'm not--" when the airman removed his knee, the Doctor tried to sit up, off-kilter, and crashed to the floor again. "--resisting. Just. Surprised." 

He calmed, enunciating the last two words very slowly and clearly as his hands quested in front of him. Ogden signaled River and the airman to stand back. 

"Leave him to it," he said.

The Doctor found the bunk frame and guided himself along the floor over to a wall. By the time he gained his feet, he had gone haltingly through four rambling bars of _Norwegian Wood_ , and had recovered enough balance to stand unassisted, his face impassive and inscrutable once again. 

"I should like to be informed in advance of any further change in plans," he announced flawlessly, and held out his hands for the cuffs.

 

 

_04 August 1969_  
_Scratch notes_  


_**Source**_ | **_Origin_** | **_Age (Yr)_** | **_Spike (mE)_**  
---|---|---|---  
_. . ._  
_Fidelio_ | _November, 1805_ | _163.71_ | _59.74_  
_La buona figliuona_ |  _February, 1760_ |  _209.48_ |  _76.48_  
_Alceste_ |  _December, 1767_ |  _201.71_ |  _73.64_  
_L'isola disabitata_ |  _December, 1779_ | _189.72_ |  _69.27_  
_Don Giovanni_ | _October, 1787_ |  _181.80_ | _66.37_  
_Il mondo della luna_ |  _August, 1777_ |  _192.01_ |  _70.11_  
_. . ._  
  
 

 

"All right." Major Ogden led the way into the observation room, then tapped some parameter options into the data pad and handed it to River. "Let's get started."

River busied herself flicking several A/V switches on the control panel, and when Ogden took a moment to study his test subject through the glass, she quickly switched off internal surveillance. 

"He's unusually quiet, isn't he?" Ogden remarked. River looked up, following his gaze. The Doctor was staring grimly into the empty room, practically vibrating in concentration; his jaw tight, his breaths even, and his usually restlessly drumming fingers resting lightly against the chair arm. It was obvious he knew something was in motion, even if he wasn't sure exactly what it was. 

"That's a blessing, at least," she answered aloud. 

Silently, she wondered what it felt like--to sense the potential of a moment, to feel the swelling chords of branching alternative timelines that signaled a major change point and to know, unequivocally, which ones were resonant or discordant to established history, which decisions were fixed points, or which ones would cascade into paradox if chosen. She understood the mechanics of it, and had even felt timescapes on her own, but only ever briefly, and only ever when the TARDIS was nearby, singing through her thoughts. For a moment, looking at the Doctor, she realized why he had so vehemently drilled the importance of 'spoilers' into her head back when she had been far too young to understand or care about the consequences. The fact that these days, the tables were turned, hardly mattered. For a moment, she understood how utterly blind she still was.

She turned her attention back to the data pad in her hand, studying it intently. "I'm sorry," she said sheepishly. "Which channel was it again?"

"One-thirty-two." Ogden leaned his tall frame over her in the cramped space, pointing out a series of charts on the screen. "Here."

"Of course. Thanks." River turned and slammed the heel of her hand up into Ogden's jaw, finishing him off with a fist to his temple as he crumpled backward. Thirty seconds later Major Ogden was out for the count, gagged with an Air Force issue necktie and bound to a support pipe under the control panel with the cuffs River had pocketed after assisting with transferring the Doctor to the laboratory chair. 

One escort down, one to go--Carillo standing guard in the corridor. River patted Ogden's cheek, collected the data pad from off the floor where it had fallen and stowed it in a large trouser pocket, and swung through the door into the examination room without a backward thought.

 

 

__

_**Source**_ | **_Origin_** | **_Age (Yr)_** | **_Spike (mE)_**  
---|---|---|---  
_. . ._  
_Ticket to Ride_ |  _April, 1965_ | _4.33_ |  _1.56_  
_A Hard Day's Night_ |  _April, 1964_ |  _5.30_ | _1.95_  
_Rocky Raccoon_ |  _August, 1968_ |  _0.96_ |  _0.36_  
_Elanor Rigby_ |  _April, 1966_ | _3.30_ | _1.20_  
_Yellow Submarine_ | _May, 1966_ |  _3.22_ |  _1.19_  
_Strawberry Fields Forever_ | _November, 1966_ |  _2.72_ |  _0.99_  
  
_Exploratory Analysis:  
Serial lag correlation of residuals vs. fitted is not evident (0.12): a single slope suffices across the independent variable gap._

**Variable** |  **Estimate** |  **StdErr** |  **T** | **Pr( >|t|)**  
---|---|---|---|---  
Intercept |  0.022  |  0.021  |  1.021  |  0.337   
age (years)  |  0.365  |  0.002 |  2233.153 |  0.000  
  
_**Correlation coefficient (age ~ spike): 1.0** _

 

"Do you need any more recording dates?" Frank Kelley paged through his vinyl collection, that had been carted quickly in his Air Force issue duffel from his locker in Building Two over to the East Laboratory records room. When the orders to report here had first come through, he'd thought he was going to get demerits for having too many unnecessary personal items brought on base. He'd been ready to argue--it had taken almost two weeks before base security cleared them through. Really it was only the essentials, and he wasn't going to leave them behind; not after Ray Spellman had let slip that the enlisted rec hall had a turntable out here in the Southwest Desert Resort a billion miles from anything. What good was a turntable without tunes? 

But the spook from D.C. had only been interested in trivia. 

"Sir?" Kelley asked again when he didn't get an answer. His fingers skimmed automatically over all the well-worn spots on the spines of cardboard covers. "There's some more liner notes--" 

He looked up to see Doctor Duvall already at the open doorway, waving his notebook in hand, open to a scribbled sheet of scratch paper.

"Bingo," the other man said, and disappeared into the corridor. 

Kelley had absolutely no idea what the spook was going on about, but from the way he'd sped out, it was probably something the Sarge should know about. He had never seen so many equations in his life.

"Far out," he said, and followed the action, leaving the albums behind in the empty room.

 

 

"Now, that--!" the Doctor exclaimed loudly, and gave River a blind icy stare when she put a finger to his lips, but continued in a harsh whisper. "Don't 'shush' me! That was violence! What did you do?" She unstrapped his head and he craned his neck, flicking his gaze back toward the observation room as though he could see it. "Have I taught you that?" he continued, hardly stopping for breath. "No, never mind, don't tell me. Spoilers. River, you're improvising, I can tell. I don't like it! You're not good at improvising--"

"Doctor!" River whispered amidst his words. But it was even harder than usual to get a word in edgewise with him when he couldn't hear it. Instead, as soon as she had freed one of his wrists, she clasped his hand between hers, precious seconds ticking by as she just held on to him. 

After a few moments, his stream of consciousness trailed off. He closed his eyes and a wave of emotion washed over his face. He reached up, finding her nose, brow, cheek, and the loose curls that had escaped her bun at her temple. 

"It is you," he said. "I knew it. I knew it was, but . . ." He choked out a laugh of relief when he felt a smile spread across her cheek, and the hint of her next words on her lips.

"Hello, sweetie," River said, stubbornly fighting the break in her voice. "We really don't have time for this right now."

"River--" he started, but stopped when she gently brought his arm back down. Then, all business, she tapped a quick alternating dot-dash sequence with two fingers against his palm.

_I SUBDO HALL GARD. WE RUN._

The Doctor leaned his head back against the chair and gave her a devastated smile. "Oh River, you are clever," he said. "So clever. But, how do you plan to subdue so many guards?"

Her stomach turned. "What? How many?" she hissed, gripping his hand hard enough to make him wince. And now she could hear them: loud voices echoing outside in the corridor. Her heart sped up, her mind reeled, and she scanned the room for something--anything--she could use as a weapon or a distraction or-- 

"River," the Doctor said. "I have to tell you--" But the voices were right outside the door now. There was no time for anything. He leaned up to her, his hand cradling the back of her head, and touched his forehead to hers. "Stay close. Please," he urged. "Tell them nothing."

The door crashed open and the Doctor shoved River aside with sudden strength. She fell to the floor, hearing a yell of surprise from one of the newcomers and the sounds of an abbreviated struggle. Duvall's voice echoed in the room--"Halt the experiment!"--and then Sergeant James was offering her a hand up. 

"Are you all right?" he asked. "How did he get loose?"

"I--I don't know," River said, her vision jittering and jumping from person to person like a camera view zoomed in too tightly to its surroundings. She quickly took the data pad from her pocket, hoping James was too distracted to notice she had stowed it. "I just went to check a reading, and--"

"I told you to watch out for him," said James. She looked over his shoulder to see Carillo and the cell block guard tightening the straps against the Doctor's head and wrist again, under the armed watch of a third soldier she vaguely recognized. She saw Specialist Duvall catch sight of her. Focusing on the data pad in her hand, he made his way straight to her. 

"It's not empathic!" He snatched the data pad away and started punching in parameters. "It's not empathic, it's definitely physical. And the strange thing is, it's _age_. More than that, it's got to be relative, temporal creation. You know the literature. Age is a construct, we hardly test for it because you don't sense age; you sense its effects." He looked up, staring intently at the Doctor, who had fallen completely silent, gripping the chair with white knuckles. "Unless you're him," Duvall finished quietly. "How the hell could someone physically sense the . . . the _history_ of--" He paused, looking anew at the room, and turned to River.

"Where's Major Ogden?" he asked.

"Sarge!" came a startled cry. Every head that could do so turned to the source of the sound. Carillo stood at the far wall, his shocked expression mirrored in the glass window, with one booted foot propping open the observation room door.

James and the guards didn't need to see into the room to guess what had gone down. River put on her best charming smile as every gun in the room was suddenly trained on her. 

"Who are you?" James asked. 

She cocked an eyebrow. "Oh, now that would be telling."

At the sergeant's nod, the two airmen at his side stepped forward and secured her arms, pulling her away from the center of the room until her back was against the observation glass. She chanced a look at the Doctor, but his face was drawn and grim. He didn't say a word. Carillo emerged from the observation room a moment later, supporting a swaying but stoic Major Ogden, who glared at her.

"Hell of a right hook you have there, Doctor." He nearly spat the last word. 

"Who do you work for?" James continued his interrogation. "Who are you, really?"

"You'll never guess." River was all cheek and bravado on the outside, and inside, she felt perched on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall. Turning to this persona was both freeing and horrifying, like plunging down with nothing to catch her, knowing that this time the impact would be unavoidable. And, as if on cue, it came.

"I think he knows her," Duvall said, turning his attention to the examination chair and pointing at the Doctor. 

"Yeah?" said James, never taking his eyes off River. "What do you say, 'sweetie'? If you won't talk, do you think he will?"

"He doesn't have to talk. If he senses history, he can show us," Duvall said, holding up the data pad. "Let's see what this can map, now that we can give it enough context to go on."

"No," River whispered. "No, please--"

"Major," Duvall said, checking numbers from his notebook against those he was swiftly entering into the data pad. "You're going to want to see this." 

He gave the data pad one last emphatic tap with the stylus, and handed it over to Ogden as the disc on the Doctor's neck started to whine. River watched, helpless, as a set of wires unraveled from its base, questing blindly outward. The Doctor tensed against the restraints, his muscles cording with effort to stay calm, his breaths quick and ragged.

"Don't," he gasped, "tell them"--gleaming filaments twirled and untwined and straightened--"any--"

The wires plunged down into his skin, ripping a scream from his throat that overwhelmed any more words. River screamed with him, a wordless cry of horror that filled the windowless room. She kicked and struggled against the soldiers' hold to no avail. The disc wailed, stronger and faster and the Doctor's coarse cries built again, but they were soon undercut by the abject awe in Ogden's voice as he monitored the data.

"Unbelievable!" the major exclaimed. "Location, position, discrimination of human versus inanimate . . . "

"I told you it wasn't empathic!" Duvall said, but Ogden ignored him. 

"Reference points, November 24th, nineteen twenty two . . ." 

Duvall's eyes flicked back to his colleague, who was pointing at him in fascination, before indicating the others in the room in slow progression. 

" . . . April 11th, nineteen fifty one . . . September 26th, nineteen forty three . . ." 

"That's my birthday," James said, stunned.

"Stop!" River said, finally finding words through her panic. "You have to stop!"

In the chair, the Doctor shuddered and cried out anew, his bound hands clawing stiffly at the metal arms. The data pad started emitting a series of steady electronic pulses. 

"We're getting an active response!" Ogden said. "He's trying something. The device is compensating, trying to dampen the sensory ability--" 

"No!" River kicked out against the guard and a hand twisted through her hair, threatened bone-crunching force against her neck with any more movement. "No! It doesn't work that way!"

"And what do you know about it?" Duvall snapped. River forced her eyes away from the sickening view of the Doctor--blood staining the corner of his mouth as he thrashed against the strap holding his head in place, his back arched in agony--to the man who was passively observing this torture as nothing more than a footnote to scientific curiosity. Duvall just sneered at her. "Did you have fun watching us scratch our heads over your friend here for the past three days?"

"You _monster!"_ River cried. She slipped the chokehold and lunged at Duvall. But the guard caught her arms, his grip wrenching tears from her eyes when she couldn't get her hands on the scientist. "What you're reading," she implored, "It's hard-wired into every cell in his body. You can't categorize it, you can't separate it or control it. Please!" She turned her attention to Major Ogden, who was still blinking blearily from the blow she'd given him, trying to make sense of the information streaming across the data pad. The device whined in fits and starts; when she looked back, the Doctor was rigid against the restraints in the chair. He couldn't have meant for her to stay silent as they did this to him. He couldn't. "For God's sake," she said, "you're killing him!"

"Henry, we're missing something," Ogden warned. "According to these readings--"

"We're not missing anything!" Duvall countered with sudden emotion. "Not anymore! This temporal element is the exact principal component we've been searching for! Perfect correlation extrapolated across the entire data range!"

"The entire data range?" Ogden jabbed the stylus onto the screen. "But if that's true, why does he think she's three--no, _negative?_ " He looked up at River in utter confusion, his deep voice booming over the chaos of sound in the room. "Why does he think she's _negative three thousand_ years old?"

With a look of stricken incredulity, Duvall whirled around and snatched the data pad from his colleague--just as the sickly, keening whine from the device on the Doctor's neck spun to a halt. Like a soldier shot in the midst of battle, the Doctor strangled a last agonized cry and fell bonelessly back against the chair. His head slumped forward, free of the strap that had loosened during his struggles, and his face relaxed into a mask of macabre calm.

"Doctor!" River finally wrenched free of the guards' hold and threw herself toward him. Someone tried to pull her away and she hurled a blind elbow backward, knocking them into an equipment cart with a crash. She grasped the cold metal chair arm to gain purchase and swung around to face him, knee to knee.

"Restrain her!" Ogden ordered. But his apprehension undermined the authority in the command, and the guards hesitated. 

The moment seemed drawn out in an arc of parabolic time, tuned to the pulse of the data pad, slowing like a dying clock in the room. River reached a trembling hand under the Doctor's chin, gently lifting his head. She smoothed her fingers over the sallow skin, the rough beard, the trace of his prominent cheekbone and jaw. The data pad's pulse hitched and settled again, its pace just fractionally faster, its tone rising like an unanswered question. 

"Oh, sweetie--" she choked out. 

Suddenly, the Doctor jolted awake beneath her. His head snapped up out of River's hold, and his eyes flew open. His pupils were dilated and unfocused, his attention miles away.

"Simple, little linear insect," he breathed. " _Gotcha._ "

With preternatural speed, he turned his gaze to where River's arm brushed his bound wrist, and seized her hand in an iron grip. The blips from the data pad immediately surged in pace, faster and faster, and River heard a rushed directive from Sergeant James--"Secure the prisoners!"--setting the soldiers moving at a blur of camouflage and barking orders all around her. Duvall dropped the device in the commotion and it clattered to the floor, sputtering from a panicked heartbeat through to a steady uncomprehending screech that filled the room. 

Digging his fingers into her wrist, the Doctor let out a triumphant whoop that cut through the fray, coalescing into words. "Hold on!" 

Someone grabbed River by the shoulder and jerked her backward. Instinctively she set her feet and channeled the momentum into a vicious backhand strike aimed at her assailant's carotid artery. She connected with less force than she anticipated, and then the soldier pulled her the rest of the way back against her heels. Her arm twisted awkwardly where the Doctor held her fast, and she cried out in pain in the midst of the chaos--but all at once . . . 

All at once, something unfathomable was happening. 

The air was suddenly too dense to accept any sound. The dead scream stuck in her throat; the thickening atmosphere pressed against her skin, suffocating and strange. She watched the soldier's grip slip free of her, falling away in dreamlike slow motion. Above her, the Doctor's words cut impossibly through the amber air.

"Hold on! Don't let go!"

Head pounding, eyes streaming, River heard muffled shouts and alarms, saw glass lightbulbs smashing to pieces as the laboratory walls seemed to _flex_ inward, pulling taut, groaning and screeching like a ship running aground. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't _think_ while all around her--

time juddered

and

_stopped._

Then the room _thunng_ -ed outward again--like the loudest, deepest cloister bell in the universe--and River blacked out.


	6. Interlude II

There was no sight or sound in the support of her existence. Nor smell, taste or touch. Those were her Pilot's constructs, a collection of senses anchoring his living sparkline in space-time. Such a limited interface. However scattershot, he experienced no more than one moment at a time, while her eleven-dimensional matrix touched every point of the continuum simultaneously. Any illusion of attention on her part was little more than a byproduct of conditional expectation. As she wished to experience time and space, the TARDIS did so with weights, boundary calculations and integrals, views easily constructed across the continuum and just as easily removed. 

As she wished. As wishes existed in dimensional timelessness. Some would always presume a time ship's link with its Pilot was simply a physical law, that TARDIS was drawn to Time Lord as opposing magnetic poles were drawn together, or perhaps if rudimentary sentience were assumed, as a moth was drawn to a flame. But the truth was complicated. The bulk of a time ship's psyche was lost in the projection to four dimensions. The point-by-point progression of discrete moments, linear communication and vortex travel was merely a shadow of herself; the more she paid attention to subsets, the less she was aware of the whole. Still, when time was woven tightly around her in a four-dimensional focus, she bent dutifully to its psychology as well as its mechanics. She chose to link with her Pilot. She wished, she desired, and she loved fiercely. 

Her linear shadow persisted even when she herself was unfettered across the continuum of existence. But she paid no attention to it; without the support of her Pilot's sparkline, it was a degenerate set of measure zero and therefore fundamentally unimportant. So she did not notice the slight change to her transportation basis vectors as her Pilot's human companions spent three days moving her interface across the United States of America. Nor did she pay any mind to the jarring and jostling of her outer shell as they stood it up again upon the loose gravel of a secluded campsite at the shore of Nesbitt Lake, Nevada.

They paced her corridors, checking and re-checking her scanner as days passed with no word. They fought and slammed her doors with the frustration of the helpless. They apologized. They made love. They stood together just beyond her open doors, holding on to each other at the edge of the lake and staring out at yet another sunset sinking behind distant thunderclouds. 

"What if they don't come back?" the one called Amy asked.

"The Doctor always comes back," the one called Rory answered, but he wasn't really certain.

"Yeah, well, his timing's rubbish." Amy swiped at a tear, and Rory hugged her closer to him.

The TARDIS didn't notice any of this. In her purest transcendental state she was certain of everything all at once; she had no concept of grief or worry. And yet . . . 

And yet something was still out of focus. She correlated automatic subroutines with seven-dimensional overlays. She churned through the determinants of variable transformations, shifting and re-shifting her views across infinite possibilities, favoring none. There was an abnormality suffusing every perspective; a pattern of nigh indiscernible ridges in what should have been smooth measure. Here, a discontinuity. All of it distressingly suggested that her domain itself was a relational derivative. That it was, somehow, diminished.

A fragmented comparison arose, cast against an impossible void-- _blindness | cerecloth | veil_ \--and then, on a six-dimensional vector, she experienced a more localized anomaly.

It left a small but unmistakeable footprint: two strands of temporal events, decoupled from the continuum's underlying base measure and running in parallel exclusivity. It was a rare signature across her existence, but she recognized it. It was calculated, deliberate and powerful, and there were very few beings with the capability to produce it. And, as memory existed in dimensional timelessness, she remembered.

She set maximal constraints and focused her attention even further. Time, linear memory and emotion surged into her with the effect of an ocean forced through a funnel. _How dare they?_ rushed (again) through her newly constructed consciousness, and _hold on_ and _what have you done_ and _danger_ and _where are you_. There was no time to listen for a response. Her cloister bell tolled, sending her Pilot's companions rushing back through her doors, their hands fluttering nervously across her controls. Her structural interface groaned as a shockwave of space-time distortion sent the humans reeling and rippled waves across the surface of the lake beyond her doors.

"Is that the signal?" Amy asked, her eyes wide and fearful. "Are we moving?"

Rory shook his head. "I don't know . . . I don't think this was part of River's plan!"

She tried to stay focused past the anomaly's nexus point, but there was nothing else to hold on to. So the TARDIS weathered the storm and settled, reluctantly releasing her integrations. _I miss you,_ she whispered, and forgot again.

When Amy and Rory opened her doors, they were met only by the breeze heralding the approaching thunderheads, and the waves lapping at the lake shore.


	7. Part 5

River slowly regained consciousness to the fuzzy, distant popping sounds of sparking electrical equipment. Her head was throbbing, there was a persistent hum of modulating background noise surrounding her, and for a long while she couldn't figure out how to open her eyes. Then, memories resurfaced of dense, impossible air, and she inhaled sharply through her nose in sudden panic, expecting resistance but finding none. The deep breaths cleared her head, and the muffled background hum swam into focus.

". . . thought I'd lost my voice or something, was starting to wonder if they'd ever figure it out. Two days, I tell you. How can humans stand it, being so thick all of the time? River? River, are you awake yet?" 

She was slumped against a cold, hard surface, one arm raised, her cheek pressed into something solid and firm that was jittering a staccato rhythm against her already pounding head. The Doctor. She blinked, focusing her gaze as her head lolled away from the contact, and corrected herself: the Doctor's knee, at any rate. The nervous rhythm stopped, and something tugged at her raised arm, jolting pain down her shoulder in a rude awakening. 

"Ah-ha, there you are! You're waking up, about time. Be a dear and unstrap me. Where's the TARDIS?"

They were still in the examination room. He still had hold of her hand. Her vision cleared, and near images came sharply into focus--the metal angles of the chair and the details of the camouflage print on her trousers. But the view of the rest of the room . . . didn't. Everything beyond a few meters away was foggy, indistinct, and, as she looked more closely, ever so slightly swirling, like a water-color painting being spun around them in three dimensions. 

River groaned and closed her eyes as a wave of dizziness washed over her. "Doctor, what . . . ?"

"You want to know what happened," his voice came from above. "Simple, it was Plan--" He paused and adjusted his grip on her hand, fingers searching her skin like a medic searching for a pulse. "Plan D!" he concluded. "Where as usual, I rescue you from the mess you're in." After a moment, he added, "And then you rescue me, admittedly. So, if you'd care to get on with it--oh, right." 

He released River's hand and she winced, gingerly bringing her arm down. She braced her good arm against the floor and got her knees underneath her. "Plan D?" she echoed, fumbling one-handed with the buckle on the nearest ankle strap. She looked up at the Doctor but all she saw was the underside of his chin and the tip of his nose; his head was resting against the back of the chair.

"Plan D, yes," he said. "Three modes in your immediate past--A, B, and C--not to mention that ill-advised improvisation in the cells that really, honestly doesn't count as a plan, even for you. You have been busy, haven't you?"

"'Yes, but--" she stammered, still processing the view of the laboratory around them. She could make out the door in front of them, a white splotch that could be a lab coat, and nearer, a form sprawled on the floor, half-blurred at the edge of the line of distinction. "Doctor, 'Plan D' is not an explanation!" she finally decided.

"You want the particulars? Now?" He suddenly sat forward, the movement jarring the ankle strap out of River's grip as she struggled to undo it. "Bit busy for that, aren't we? I thought we were in the midst of brilliantly escaping from a maximum security top secret government prison."

The Doctor jostled her bad arm and River sucked in a breath. "Yes, I'm working on it! I can multi-task, you know. Tell me what happened, and stop fidgeting, for goodness sake!"

"The short answer is paradox and some misapplied extrapolation." The Doctor jerked his hand forward and frowned at the resistance. "If you'd just undo my hands--" 

"If _you'd_ just hold still--" River snapped, and then stopped, looking at him in sudden realization as he stared impatiently down at her. Pain forgotten, she sat quickly up on her knees. "Doctor? You can hear me? That awful thing . . . Sweetie, are you all right now?" 

"You're asking after me, how domestic," he answered, and flashed a genuine smile before apparently remembering that he was cross with her. "Yes. All right. Never mind, never better. Now, I know you like to wait until I'm tied up to stop and chat but honestly, River--" He tugged tight fists sharply against both wrist restraints for emphasis. "Hands!"

"All right, all right!" River nearly laughed in relief. She hauled herself up and got to work freeing the Doctor's left wrist. "After all, why would I have been worried about you? 'Don't tell them anything,' you said, and then what? How did you undermine the device? What did you do?" 

"Oh, it's all questions from you!" he answered, pulling his left hand free and immediately starting to work on the strap holding his right wrist in place. He chased away River's attempts at help with a petulant slap of her hand, so she just stepped back and let him work as he continued to talk. "Me too, I've got loads of questions. How's the weather been, what took so long, does this beard look as un-cool as it feels, did you happen to catch their names--the one in charge and the other one--because I've had a running bet with myself about it, did you find the bone knitters in the med bay for Amy's wrist, where's the TARDIS--hang on, those are all out of order."

"She's about forty miles northeast of us," River answered the last of the lot, her eyes traveling the impossible room again. "But she'll come when you call her. I was trying to tell you; Plan A's a psychic switch. We can transfer it whenever you're ready. And what do you mean, 'paradox'? How does paradox get us . . . this?" 

"You're asking about the quarantine," his voice came at her back, the slightly muffled sound indicating he was bent over, working himself free of the ankle straps. "My people have a trick for dealing with paradox. A temporal grasp, if you will. I don't just sense time, you know, I can massage it, stretch it, flex it like a--" 

"--finger or an arm," River finished the sentence along with him, and turned around to find him mostly free but upright again and strangely still, squinting up at her curiously. "So you've told me," she said. "Or at least you will have. Doctor?"

The Doctor grumbled something about 'repeats' under his breath, then rubbed his wrists vigorously. "Well, a big enough, nasty enough paradox leaves an imprint that's easy to feel and grasp onto. With a good grasp you can quarantine it in a loop--sort of, not like a loop at all, like a bubble if it helps, but not like that either. A bubble!" he decided anyway, "so it doesn't pollute the original time stream while you clean it up. Which is what I've done here, quarantined a paradox in its own separate time stream." He stopped for a breath. "Paradox," he finished, "supplied by our antithetical timelines."

"But we've always been careful with spoilers." River turned toward the not-bubble again. She tried to touch what looked like an edge, but it was like orienting the wrong way looking into a mirror; everything fled from her outstretched fingers, no matter which direction she tried, as if she were always at the bubble's center. It made her head light, and she focused again on the Doctor as he kicked his ankles free. "Even I know that in the grand scheme of things, our timelines hardly count as a 'big, nasty paradox'," she said. 

"Brilliant, you're following so far. But you've forgotten about extrapolation, supplied by them," the Doctor replied, gesturing vaguely at the room. He blinked, furrowing his brow at the scene, and then sat forward with his elbows on his knees and pressed his fingers to his forehead. "Hang on. Bit out of practice, haven't done this since the war. Half a moment." 

After a few seconds, the bubble seemed to dissipate and the indistinct, foggy shapes around them gained definition, still frozen in time. River could make them out almost perfectly; guards with guns drawn, Duvall in his white lab coat, arms half raised in surprise, Ogden shielding his eyes from a shattering bulb. As the bubble's edge faded into the frozen moment, the nearer form sprawled half inside, half out resolved as well. It was the young soldier who had tried to pull her away at the last second. 

"Right, that's better," the Doctor said, clapping his hands on his knees. River turned back around.

"Can the TARDIS land in this 'bubble'?" she asked.

"Not really a bubble. Mutually exclusive time streams. We're frozen to them; they're frozen to us. But the TARDIS exists across everything simultaneously so we should have a clear path to her." He levered himself up from the chair. "No time to lose, then. Let's go." 

River blinked at him in confusion. "We don't have to go anywhere. Psychic switch, remember?"

The Doctor ignored her, his tone impatient, his stance tentative. "Of course, time will catch up with us the longer we stay in the quarantine, until everything re-integrates when the bubble bursts. So, which way? We really need to go." 

"I told you--" River's confusion turned to mild alarm as he swayed in place, one hand still gripping the chair. "Doctor?" she asked, hastening toward him. 

He took a halting step forward. "River," he said, color draining from his face. "Where's the TARDIS?" 

Then his legs gave out and he crashed forward into her arms. 

"Doctor!" River cried. She tried to catch him but her bad arm jolted sharply and she had to let go, falling backward. The Doctor collapsed onto his hands and knees nearly on top of her, bracing one hand against the floor by her hip and grimacing in pain. Energy crackled in the room. Shapes flickered and blurred around them, and a static noise filled the thickening air with echoes of shouting voices. Panicking, River tried to sit up, but the Doctor curled the fingers of his free hand tightly into her shirt sleeve and hissed "Stay exactly where you are!" desperately at her chest.

River took a dizzying breath and froze. The Doctor pinned her to the floor, his muscles tense with effort as he anchored himself against some unseen force. Then, eventually, the air thinned out and the room settled again around them. Soon the only sound was the close hitching of his breath at her ear. The only motion was the tremor she could feel in his arm as he loosened his grip on her sleeve. She sat up slowly, bringing a hand to his shoulder. He flinched away from her touch, and then let out a shaky sigh and allowed her to help him sit back, leaning against her side and her good arm for support. 

"She eats paradox for breakfast, my girl. I should be able to feel her. Where is she?" he asked. His voice was rough and tired. 

"You can call her here, can't you?" River tried to corral his quaking hands, but he just closed his eyes, took her wrist and guided her fingers to his palm. 

"You'll have to spell it. Too many possibilities. I can't make out the details."

Dread settled over her. As the Doctor focused down at her hand, River caught sight of the metal monstrosity glinting at the back of his neck. No, no, no, she told herself; he'd beaten it. He'd beaten it and she'd never doubt him again. 

"Doctor?" she asked, gently lifting his chin and searching his face for a sign of recognition. "Doctor, please tell me you can hear me. You were looking at me earlier. Please--"

"You're asking--" He stopped, swallowed against a catch in his voice, and tried again. "You're asking if I can hear you. If I can see you, or . . . or link with your mind. I can't. This vise--it's not taking orders anymore, but neither is it letting go."

"But we've been talking." River forced her voice to stay calm. "You're hearing me right now." 

"Technically, I am predicting your timeline very precisely." He raised a finger as if in academic debate, his voice gaining strength and speed with the lecture. "Which I am able to do thanks to some dodgy modeling from the aforementioned vise, and the fact that we are in a paradoxical quarantined time stream. Paradox!"--he reached the finger out unerringly to touch her nose--"They thought they had my temporal grasp all sorted, but this place is so dull! So why would they have any reason to think about paradox? Or, more importantly, why would they have any data that could inform them of the inverse relationship between paradoxical and natural time sensitivity?" He stopped and frowned, drumming the air with agitated fingers. "I've lost you. Doesn't matter--" 

Another spasm of pain coursed through his body, nearly sending him to the floor again. River caught his shoulders and righted him. 

"Yes, it does!" she hissed. "Whatever's happening, I think it's getting worse."

He grimaced and took two steading breaths, before squeezing his eyes closed in reluctant agreement. "Time sensitivity is two separate and inversely proportional systems, and . . . they only knew about one of them. If you build a set of controls based on natural time sensitivity and then try to use them to throttle paradoxical . . . how are your maths, River?"

"My _maths_? Doctor--" 

"Yes, it's important. Do you know what happens when you take the limit of one divided by X, as you force X toward zero?" 

River sat back, realization finally dawning. "It increases," she said. "Exponentially. That's what happened, isn't it? They tried to stifle your time sense and instead, they ramped it up . . . enough for you to feel my imprint as a paradox and grab hold." 

"See, now you're getting it! As my good friend George Box once told me, friends don't let friends extrapolate a simple regression line. _Stupid_ thing!" He brought a hand to the back of his neck and growled in frustration when he couldn't stand more than the slightest touch against the device. "I couldn't force it to let go but I could certainly send its greedy little algorithms deeper down the wrong path. Help me up."

River did her best to support him, holding him steady while he gathered his legs underneath him, but she couldn't ignore the sight of the implant at his neck. The memory of those wires burrowing down into his skin made her almost physically ill. "How much deeper?" she asked. "I've never seen you do anything even remotely this powerful before. The damage it could cause--oh, Doctor, what have you done?" 

He gritted his teeth, impatient hands fighting her help as much as he accepted it. "Yes, it's dialed up way past eleven on the meter. Yes, it's the only reason I can hold on to this quarantine for a tiny paradox such as ourselves, and also maintain it without twelve other Time Lords and a stabilizing matrix. And no, it's not going to last much longer, and it's going to cause a hell of a crash when time catches up with us again. So if you'd be so kind as to point me toward wherever you've parked the TARDIS, rather sooner than later . . ." 

The TARDIS. River's heart sank. "Oh my god. How long--?"

"No more questions!" He shouted the slurred words outright and shook off her help, pushing her backwards and sending them both off-balance in the still room. River caught herself before falling, and he rounded back on her, frustration and fear finally sapping the rest of his patience. "TARDIS! Where! Now!" he snapped. "I don't like being kept in the dark, and I have been there quite literally for forty-two days, eight hours and nineteen minutes, and now you're here and she's nowhere! What have you done with her! And _what_ \--" He stopped suddenly. Then he turned slowly and pointed off to his right. ". . . is that?"

River followed his stance. He was pointing right at the sprawled shape of the soldier at the bubble's edge. His face fell, the anger and fear leaching out of him as quickly as it had come, and River suddenly realized there was more to that soldier's stillness than a frozen snapshot. 

"Leave it," she said.

"What . . ." the Doctor said again, his quiet confusion almost more horrifying than his earlier outburst. He took an unsteady step and the room flickered around them. Pressure built against her ears and River took him by the shoulders, turning him away and snatching his hand up in hers. There wasn't time to dwell. She tapped out a quick message into his palm-- _TARDIS 40M NE_ \--refocusing his attention.

The Doctor bent his head over her hand, muttering as he processed the information. "Meters, forty meters where? Forty--"

River brushed her hand across his palm to erase her words and started a new sequence. _MIL--_

"Miles." He gripped her hand, ending the message abruptly. "Forty miles . . . oh, River." 

The weight of her words sunk in, and there was nothing River could do to soften the blow. He looked beyond tired. His grasp tightened around her fingers and he cocked his head, staring blindly at her face, brow furrowed, trying to work something out. Then, just for a moment, there was a spark of life in his eyes, and he flashed her a daft grin. 

" _Run for it_ , forty miles? Was that Plan C?" he asked, then affected a sober frown. "River, that's . . . that's an awful plan."

"Oh, and yours was better?" She guided his hand to the crook of her elbow on her uninjured arm. 

"Rubbish. Simply awful." He gripped her elbow with one hand and her shoulder with the other, resting his forehead against his tense fingers at her neck and collecting himself for a moment before straightening up again. "It's no wonder you needed rescuing. You are very, very lucky I always come through for you."

River sighed. "I hate you," she said.

A small smile touched his lips, hardly visible in his profile at her side. "No you don't."

"I do." She took a cleansing breath. "Are you ready?"

"Ready to go?" he echoed. "God, yes. I thought you'd never ask."


	8. Part 6

THIS REEL IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE  
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY

SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-F6-R620  
AREA 51 EAST LABORATORY  
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS

AUDIO ANNOTATION: RECORDED AND ARCHIVED 15 AUGUST 1969  
OGDEN, MAJOR CHARLES J N.R.O. SPECIAL ATTACHE

TRANSCRIPT (18:35): The surveillance feed is clear and uninterrupted until eighteen-thirty-three hours, twenty-two seconds, here, when subject thirty-six regains consciousness after the SMM probe begun by Doctor Duvall. Then we see the lights flicker, and at eighteen-thirty-three, twenty-nine seconds, surveillance is interrupted. We see the image distort briefly, and then the feed splices directly to eighteen-fifty-five, thirty-two, as though the camera were switched off and then on again. This is the point of initiation of what we are calling the alpha shockwave.

I'll pause the tape here for a second to explain in more detail. There is no visual record from any camera on the base of the period extending from eighteen-thirty-three hours, twenty-nine seconds to eighteen-fifty-five hours, thirty-two seconds. Furthermore, no one present on the base has any recollection of that stretch of time. Whatever temporal ability subject thirty-six activated, the effect seems to have wiped those twenty-two minutes completely off the map. We also know that the effect was not contained to the base alone. Residents reported noticeable time skips of varying intervals as far away as the towns of Rachel, twenty-five miles away, and Crystal Springs, fifty miles. Scientific instruments measured smaller temporal disturbances as far away as Salt Lake City.

Resuming the tape, we can plainly observe the secondary effects of the ability. His accomplice--the unknown foreign agent, alias Doctor Sarah Hamilton--frees subject thirty-six from the restraints with no interference from the security detail. In the chaos after the shockwave, Sergeant James' men regroup to form a perimeter, but the subject and his accomplice continue in their actions unimpeded.

The plain fact is, we didn't see them. After recovering from the alpha shockwave, base personnel--myself included--saw what could only be described as a 'bubble' of distortion surrounding the examination chair, the subject, and his accomplice. We detected no movement from within. We thought it was a defensive measure, a screen of some kind, and so we planned for a siege. At nineteen-hundred hours, twelve seconds, you can see Sergeant James examining the spot where the bubble appeared, at the same time that the subject's accomplice does. But the bubble itself is no longer on any of the visual records.

Psychological evaluation of the visual record of their conversation indicates that the subject and his accomplice clearly know each other and most likely have collaborated on previous missions. We think he uses a code name--likely 'River', as it corroborates airman Carillo's observation that he uttered the phrase earlier in the cell block, though we didn't realize it at the time. Physically, we can see that the subject is clearly in distress and is still operating within the parameters of sensory isolation, as his reactions are not responses to visual or auditory cues, and as you can see here, he obviously needs mobility assistance from his accomplice. 

At nineteen-oh-five and ten seconds, the subject points to the position off-camera where the casualty occurred. This brief gesture is the only indication of it in the visual records. 

 

 

' _Run for it_ ' was a generous description of this rubbish plan. 

The Doctor would have told River as much, but he was too busy trying to stay on his feet as they picked their way carefully out of the laboratory. His balance reeled, and his nerves buzzed with the echo of the vise's renewed grip on his systems. Time was all out of sorts; he'd spent so long relying on little else, and now everything was bizarrely re-weighted relative to the likelihood of collision across his two hastily constructed time streams. Spatio-temporal motion didn't help. With each step, potentials rushed against him and receded away at unexpected angles. With each passing second, events swelled like waves against a break point, and he was fighting to keep that break point on the future horizon for as long as he could. 

In the middle of it all blazed River Song, pristine and precise and impossible to ignore. Cushioned in the quarantine, her most minute decision points and interleaved potentials all stood out like brush strokes on a canvas that was usually so much more distant. The complex manifold of their history danced temporal summersaults around him, and he had to stop himself trying to adjust his grasp on that space. Its solidity was an illusion of the distorted, magnified view the vise had given him; trying to examine his future--her past--could unravel the delicate threads or disintegrate them outright. Instead, he brought the brunt of his concentration to bear on her immediate decisions and actions. He had to; it was either that or keel over before their escape had even truly begun.

They weaved around the other humans in the room, their stalled change points bending grotesquely around the barrier like images in a fish-eye lens. Awful plan. What had he been thinking? Well, he'd been thinking it was better than getting shot or recaptured, and anything was better than the interminable waiting. But it was beyond disorienting here at the flash point, and there was no way to avoid the impending crash of reintegration when the quarantine failed. The TARDIS would help . . . 

His train of thought derailed momentarily. River didn't notice, staying strong and steady as he set his jaw and tightened his grip on her arm. The TARDIS. His beautiful ship, sunk forty miles deep in the black ocean of the outside world. Seven weeks he'd spent stitching over her aching absence in his mind, and the wound still tore open as easily as tearing through paper. Forty miles. He'd been anticipating something nearer to forty meters. He'd been so hoping to feel her time signature. Not that he knew exactly how she would seem to him in this state, but it would be something, at least a phantom echo to fill the void of their severed psychic link.

Wretched vise. Their lives were measured in time across eons, in space across galaxies, and now forty miles was a chasm between them, the shape of which he'd never, ever experienced. He hated it. He hated every last thing about this infuriating, vicious, _human_ thing--

An unexpected obstacle at his feet sent him stumbling into River's side, and he clamped down mercilessly on his indignation. Focus on the task at hand. Outline the parameters for success and attempt to communicate them to the woman who'd been ready to take on an entire air force base for him with nothing more than audacity and a smirk. They had to stick to paths of low resistance; the more they tested the boundaries of this quarantine, the quicker the break point threatened to envelop him. The TARDIS . . . well, she would help cushion the blow, if they could reach her before it came time to burst this bubble. 

He was just gaining his bearings again when River stopped and reached for something on the floor. Likelihoods spiked and his head swam. He clutched her shoulder and hissed _"don't touch it!"_ , squeezing shut his useless eyes. She argued--it was something they needed? A weapon, maybe. Useless as well. Whatever it was, its timeline was already intertwined with someone or something on the other side of the barrier. His stomach churned at the thought of trying to wrest it into the quarantine, and he wordlessly pulled River away before the barrier flexed too far.

She asked a question that set off a complex set of expectations across all her present potentials at once--a _why_ \--and he snapped _"I'll explain later!"_ brusquely and probably loudly in her ear given her resulting flinch. Too many _whys_ and _hows_ were taking too much concentration to parse and too much energy to answer. No more time for particulars; they needed to move. Now. Faster. Forty miles, River!

River tensed under his grip, even as her potentials peaked determinedly. They turned away from the object, and she asked something simpler. It caused just a flickering split in her near term probability space, and the Doctor realized it wasn't a frivolous _why_ : no, she needed to inform an immediate decision. The prediction followed at near certainty. Stupid Doctor. Even rubbish plans meant assessing supplies and assets, and now she'd had to leave an asset behind. She wanted to know, was everything off limits?

 _"Not everything,"_ he managed. He did his best to explain the parameters, his thoughts spilling too fast past stubbornly slow words. He told her to stay with settled things, forgotten things, things the others wouldn't likely use or miss. Stick to the sidelines if they could. If not, he'd let her know what was safe to interact with.

She paused, considering, and then carefully took his hand and placed it on a smooth surface directly in front of them. Her goals shifted, the timelines tightening into new configurations, and with a quip and likely a smile, she asked one last question. 

He concentrated but felt no signs of collision. _"Have at it,"_ he answered.

 

 

SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-F6-R620  
AREA 51 EAST LABORATORY  
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS

AUDIO ANNOTATION (19:08:30) ADDED 15 AUGUST 1969

TRANSCRIPT (CON'D): His accomplice doesn't appear to see the base personnel any more than we could see the pair of them. But note how she defers to subject thirty-six's perception. At nineteen-oh-nine hours she attempts to recover the SMM data pad only a few seconds before Doctor Duvall takes it to check the readings. But subject thirty-six holds her back. Why? The device was already dead from the effect of the alpha shockwave, but I don't think that's the reason they left it behind. 

We have no idea what would have happened if both the escapees and the base personnel had attempted to use the same resource or occupy the same space at the same time. It never happened for the duration of the alpha shockwave effect.

Here, at nineteen-hundred-ten hours, forty seconds, she consults him before kicking open the examination room door.

 

 

In the warrens of the underground complex, River set a dizzying pace. The Doctor tried to stay oriented, but paying attention to anything except River Song was like trying to listen for the doorbell or the telephone while a symphony orchestra blared Beethoven's Ninth into his ears through padded headphones with the volume cranked up to maximum. He was soon hopelessly turned around, lost in a jumble of stuttering stops and starts predicated by the decisions guiding River's evolving escape route. Left, right, straight on, badge through, lift. Lift? No. No lift. Nicks and scrapes as she ducked him through a cramped doorway and placed his fingers on an access ladder. He blanched, and she thought better of it, spinning them both round and setting off again in a direction he wasn't prepared for. Then it was all stairways and heavy doors punctuating blank spans of disassociated steps--corridors, evident only by the absence of anything else. 

Through it all, he clung to her like a castaway to a shattered raft in a storm. Now and again she tried to slow down for his sake, but he just gripped her tighter and urged her onward. The tide of time was manageable for now, but it was creeping inexorably toward the break point, and they needed to put distance between themselves and the eventual pursuit while they could. To him it felt like they were hurtling forward with reckless abandon, but he knew she could go ten times faster on her own.

Then there was the aching, exhilarating rush of finally _moving_ after so much time spent at a standstill. The horror of the past months was catching up to him, and now that they were running, he wasn't sure he could stop. There were too many days of caged frustration and helplessness behind him. Too many sleepless, monotonous nights spent with his hands splayed flat against painted concrete blocks, pressing his cheek to the cold cell walls and feeling for footsteps, vibrations, generators--anything to ground his skin in something other than probabilities. And there was something else they'd left behind in that awful place, something that no amount of running could outpace, something . . .

Another jolt broke their stride, and then his bare feet scraped against a rough floor, sharp with some kind of debris. He gasped, more from surprise than pain, but River was already coming to a halt. He crashed against her and they steadied themselves. He was panting for breath, heartsbeat pounding in his ears, sweat stinging his eyes. River wasn't fazed at all by the flight. She asked after him but he just waved a hand at her; he couldn't muster the necessary concentration for words.

She let him catch his breath and then guided his hand to a metal railing. She said something that was a variation of "wait here" almost surely. He nodded at her, gripping the railing fiercely and trying to control the flood of panic that coursed through him as she turned away. Another set of words that was "I'll be right back" with eighty-seven percent probability, and he was alone. 

River's time echo receded, and he tried to get his bearings. Was it warmer? Difficult to tell. The stairwells had seemed cooler than the corridors but his ability to gauge temperature had been sluggish from the start--an effect of the vise strangling his touch-telepathy. He felt forward on the railing and found a kink and a downward angle indicating a staircase in front of him. A downward staircase? That couldn't be right; they needed to get above ground. He cast out from his handhold, looking for an upward slope to match, but was blocked after three steps by another downward sloping handhold. There was no other way to go. 

He stilled shaking muscles, and tried to concentrate. Had they run into a dead end? A disused annex, aged and falling to seed? They would have to turn around. How much time had they lost?

It wasn't until a draft across the quarantine barrier picked up into something stronger, ruffling through his hair and tickling the side of his face, that he realized where he was. His breath caught in his throat. His hands ached against the hard steel railing, and damn this vise, he couldn't see _anything_ and he couldn't hear _anything_ , and River was gallivanting off to who knew where doing who knew what and he just couldn't wait for her. He had to know, right now. He had to. 

So he felt his way clumsily down the staircase--shorter and steeper than the others they'd navigated, its dense material swallowing any vibrations from his footfalls--and passed out of cold-soaked shadow into somewhere new. 

It wasn't an annex, where he'd been; it was an access landing for a raised loading bay beyond a fire door. It wasn't debris under his feet; it was rough concrete scattered with gravel, giving way to rougher asphalt where the staircase ended. There was no kiss of sunlight on his face or head, but the ground that passed across the quarantine barrier was still warm with the memory of a scorched afternoon. Now it was closer to early evening. He was outdoors. 

Dark, silent, stifling, outdoors. His first taste of freedom, and he could hardly tell the difference between it and a cell.

Panic surged forward again, this time rattling his hold on the timelines, and he backpedaled. His heel hit the staircase at an unexpected angle and he crashed down, jarring his side against the unforgiving concrete edges and unable to find which way was up again. Physical reaction warred with rational thought; was he even breathing? He couldn't hear himself gasp for air, he couldn't tell if the tasteless molecules were making it into his lungs. Unthinking, he went into respiratory bypass--fiery needles stung every nerve at once as the vise fought back. It forced a harsh cry from his throat and jolted him back to his limited senses. He pressed his fingers against his skull, instinctively tightening his grasp on the slipping temporal strands, and tried to ride out the overwhelming wave of dizziness and exhaustion that followed. 

The air was fine. He needed to stay calm. He was no more impaired than he'd been for weeks; it was just a new perspective, that was all. They couldn't afford to lose the quarantine now. They had to make it off the base, past the perimeter at least, not just for his sake but for River's. They may not be able to escape the prison that lay in her future, but it wasn't here and it wasn't now. He had no choice but to keep himself together; if nothing else, that fact was abundantly clear in every present potential he could feel.

The Doctor forced himself to forget what he couldn't control, couldn't sense and couldn't do, and to concentrate all of his energy on the abilities he had left. He imagined a hand circling loose strands, closing to a strong fist and taking hold of the thin paradox that fueled the quarantine. Then he took several steadying breaths, in and out, and let the last of the sting from the vise recede. He sat up slowly on the stair, and studied his surroundings again.

He was outdoors. Probability surrounded him, in the details of chance that had formed this landscape, in the static earth that until now had been ubiquitous behind young prison walls. And there was more out here, even across the strange lens of the quarantine barrier; the effect was weaker here than at the flash point, and he just had to pay attention. The breeze that had initially alerted him to his location blew a fluid undirected chaos, dissipating up and up and up to the open sky. Pinprick stars dotted old cataclysms across the expanse, distorted and frozen and so very distant. Outdoors--the temporal view was suddenly like standing at the edge of a chasm. His head felt light with the space of it, and he nearly toppled over again on the stair before reining in his senses to a tighter focus around him.

Nearer, at his feet amid the passive erosion of stone, there was a collection of precisely organized animate potential; he reached out a hand and it brushed against the pointed leaves and soft tips of a sprig of common desert grass. With his fingers, he mapped out the network of its thin stalks pressed flush against the side of the staircase. He traced them down to the ground, to the dusty cracks where pavement met the rough, ill-formed edges that indicated where the concrete had escaped its foundation when it was poured. Some years ago, that. Fifteen? Twelve, at least. 

His mind settled in these minute facts. His fingers stilled, and he let out a relieved breath. He focused his attention outward again to catch a hint of the rising symphony of River Song, still some meters away as she made her way back toward his position. Five minutes and twenty-two seconds had elapsed since she'd left him.

That was when he felt it. At first it was just a glimmer of something altogether impossible out of the corner of his temporal eye, muted by River's echo and the near press of the surrounding buildings. But even as brief as the feeling was, it was clear--like the view of a star through a telescope, heedless of the distortion arising from this paltry quarantine. Oh . . . _oh_ , where was it? Where?

He realized he was moving when he staggered into a military truck, kicking his toes against the tire, but he didn't care. He lurched past the obstacle and felt his way along the wall beyond. Concrete scraped his fingers but the thread he was following was blossoming with every step he took away from this prison, every step that left the oppressive bedrock and walls behind. This blasted building was in the way, but behind that he could still feel it--feel _her_ \--dim but persistent, the fact of her so solid, as though he'd known all his life that this is how she was really meant to be understood. Even in shadow, her ancient likelihoods radiated surety and boundless potential all at once, soothing his raw, abused time sense like balm on a burn. 

The wall ended, falling away to nothing under his fingertips. He stepped out into the black silence beyond, and there she was.

 

 

SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ARCHIVE FILM #1969-431-E2-X930  
EXTERIOR GROUNDS  
04-05 AUGUST 1969, 18:00-06:00 HRS

AUDIO ANNOTATION (19:20:18) ADDED 15 AUGUST 1969 

TRANSCRIPT (CON'D): The subject and his accomplice briefly separated at approximately nineteen-twelve hours while she retrieved supplies. Surveillance at fifteen-hundred forty-nine hours shows her leaving the east laboratory building with a duffel bag and returning shortly thereafter empty-handed; she must have stashed it outside at that time in anticipation of their planned escape. 

Here, we can see the subject, alone, appearing briefly onscreen from the building ten security camera and walking toward the supply airstrip. This is the last visual record of the subject from base security. When we triangulated his course on the map, it showed that the subject at this point was heading exactly in the direction of Nesbitt Lake.

All notes and annotations of these tapes have been prepared with full disclosure to the best of my abilities for the purposes of the inquiry.

*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*

 

 

River stared down at the small pack wedged behind the waste bins outside the enlisted mess hall, and hesitated. Changing their escape route meant that she'd had to double back on her own for her gear when they reached the surface, and she would just have to hope it had stayed hidden enough to count as a "forgotten thing" by the Doctor's inscrutable rules. It wasn't much, but what was there was desert essentials; they couldn't afford to leave it behind. 

Decision made, she snatched the bag out of its hiding place and unzipped it. The sky didn't fall, which she took as an encouraging sign. She double checked the contents: water canteens, a torch, some pilfered MREs and a field kit with basic toiletries and first aid supplies. She hadn't been able to get her hands on any guns, but it did have a few items that could be used for defense. It also had a lightweight coat and, more importantly, a pair of boots for the Doctor--both of which he would hate on sight in any other circumstance. 

Not that he'd be able to see them at all in this circumstance. Or possibly ever again, as they'd left the data pad back in the laboratory. 

An unexpected sob forced itself up through her, and River tightened her grip on the pack, quelling any more. Here they were, weaponless and alone in a paradoxical eddy of a time stream, surrounded by enemies, and all she could think was that the Doctor was always so particular about shoes, and how would he ever successfully navigate the TARDIS boot cupboard again?

It was a silly thought, and premature. River forced it away. She closed the pack, slung it gingerly across her shoulder and headed back to the loading bay where she'd left the Doctor. 

When she got there, he was gone. 

River called to him and cursed herself for it; of course he wouldn't hear her. But where would he go on his own? She studied the dusky sky, looking for any sign that the quarantine bubble had burst. Twilight was creeping up on them--an effect, from what she could gather, of time bleeding across the edges of the bubble the farther they got from its focal flash point in the laboratory. But the base itself was still deathly silent. Even the evening thunderclouds hung nearly motionless above the western hills. 

She was just set to start panicking in earnest when, stepping away from the building to look across the plain, she saw his thin frame silhouetted against a backdrop of tall field grass.

He was standing with his back to her, clear of the low, white laboratory buildings, at the edge of the supply airstrip. River hefted her pack and hurried toward him but as she approached she realized that he didn't seem lost or disoriented. He was just standing quietly, his chin upturned, his slight bow-legged posture giving him an air of nonchalance. He would have had his hands in his pockets, if the scrubs he was wearing had had any. Instead, he held his hands clasped lightly behind his back, his fingers at rest from their usual patternless rhythms of worry.

He must have felt the effect of her time stream as she came closer, because he turned his head and then waved her forward. When she took his hand, his eyes were closed and he was smiling.

"It's beautiful. I never imagined . . ." His voice wavered, and he didn't finish the thought.

River stared out at the desolate plain and the bone white lake bed. "It's just dust and dry brush. I don't know what it looks like to you, but--"

"Not that." With her hand still grasped in his, he pointed out to a spot of sky just above the hills. "Forty miles, northeast. That way. Hello, gorgeous." 

"The TARDIS," River breathed, scanning the distant peaks anew. "You can sense her time signature from here?" 

"Like a sunrise on the horizon." He turned toward her, grinning. "You know, I think this rubbish plan might actually work."

 

 

THIS TRANSCRIPT IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE  
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY

18 AUGUST 1969  
RECORD OF SECURITY DEBRIEFING: JAMES, STAFF SERGEANT KEVIN J  
AIR FORCE INTERNAL AFFAIRS

PRESENT REPRESENTATIVE PARTIES  
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C  
HARRIS, MAJOR REGINALD D (IA INVESTIGATOR)  


MAJ. HARRIS: State your name and title for the inquiry.

SGT. JAMES: Staff Sergeant Kevin James, sir. Security supervisor, buildings three through eight.

MAJ. HARRIS: That includes the East Laboratory?

SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir. 

MAJ. HARRIS: Have you examined Major Ogden's annotations to the security camera reels during the night in question?

SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.

MAJ. HARRIS: Is there a reason why you didn't examine these tapes on the evening of August 4th?

SGT. JAMES: We did, sir.

MAJ. HARRIS: Say that again, Sergeant?

SGT. JAMES: Security cameras were among the first things we checked, sir. I stationed troops at all the video monitors with orders to report any unusual sightings as soon as we recovered from the alpha shockwave.

MAJ. HARRIS: Sergeant, I don't need to remind you that two prisoners literally walked out of this detention center on your watch. It's all plain as day in the surveillance records, they practically waved 'hello' at the cameras. This is state of the art technology. You had ample opportunity to find and apprehend them from video surveillance.

SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.

MAJ. HARRIS: So, would you care to explain why none of your troops stationed at these monitors mentioned anything out of the ordinary? Why your eyes and ears simply let these detainees past?

SGT. JAMES: Sir, the surveillance tapes were altered.

MAJ. HARRIS: Altered? How? 

SGT. JAMES: We don't know, sir. All we know is that at the time of live surveillance, the feeds only showed the bubble in the examination room. There was no indication of any escape or movement at all from the detainees until twenty-one-oh-eight hours. We think that's when the changes to the tapes occurred.

MAJ. HARRIS: But you aren't certain.

SGT. JAMES: No, sir. 

MAJ. HARRIS: Why not?

SGT. JAMES: We didn't rewind the tapes far enough to see evidence of the changes at the time. We only checked back to about twenty-one-hundred hours on surveillance. We assumed that any escape attempt that the detainees made started at or near twenty-one-oh-eight hours. 

MAJ. HARRIS: Obviously, that was not the case.

SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir. Going by what we know now of the timeline, it's likely they were completely off the base by then. 

MAJ. HARRIS: Twenty-one-oh-eight hours, that's--

SGT. JAMES: --the time of the bravo shockwave, yes, sir.

*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*


	9. Part 7

They needed a vehicle. They would never make it on foot; River knew that the Doctor understood that fact. He had to have a mental picture of the unforgiving landscape facing them. He had to remember the patrols and the desolation, both spanning twenty miles or more in every direction. But still, it hurt to turn him away from the TARDIS. 

His face fell when she put a hand on his shoulder, halting his first tentative step across the barren plain and directing him back to the base. Worry lines creased his forehead, the pain of betrayal flashing across his features before he caught himself and buried the emotion. He shook his head as though he could free it that way from the pull of his ship on the horizon, scrubbed a hand over the ragged beard along his jaw, and murmured a distracted "yes, of course, of course," even though River hadn't said anything aloud. 

And what could she say? She clenched her fists in useless anger, the action sending a burn up through the tendons in her injured shoulder. Around them, the landscape was quiet and still. The buildings were utterly vulnerable, and her study of the base layout had shown her where the explosive fuel was kept. She could torch the laboratories, raze them to nothing but pits in the ground. No one would be able to stop her.

Instead, she dug resolutely through the supply pack and thrust the pair of boots at the Doctor's chest. "Here, put these on," she said. He gave a startled grunt and clutched at them in surprise. She went back to rummaging more forcefully than necessary through the pack while he searched the leather folds and laces in his hands. 

"Boots. Brilliant," he said tersely, sounding for all the world as if they were anything but. She looked over to where he was scuffing his toes into the dusty gravel. Aside from a mild breeze and the distant TARDIS, it was likely the clearest sensation he had of their immediate surroundings. 

"Sweetie, you need them." She could hunt down Duvall and Ogden, she decided, and give them each one bullet--no, one small conical implant at the base of the neck, and send them into the silent dark. It was more than they deserved. But she just turned her attention to zipping up the pack and pointed out, "Your feet are scraped to hell and your toe is bleeding."

"Army boots, old girl, do you believe it?" He lodged this complaint at the northeast sky while seating himself carefully on the ground, still exploring the offending footwear with his fingers and grumbling. "Well, I don't like them at all. And what next? Mittens, I suppose . . ." Then he stopped and cocked his head, scowling over at River, who hastily and rather unnecessarily put a hand to her mouth to try and stifle the sound coming from it. "River, are you _laughing_?"

She cleared her throat. "Of course not," she said, but couldn't stop the smile that had hijacked her anger and somehow turned it neatly on its ear. "It's just nice to know some things never change." 

"You could have brought--oi!" He cut off when she bounced a ball of rolled-up socks expertly off his forehead to land at his fingertips. He pointed accusingly in her direction before collecting them. "Stop launching things at me! I hate you."

"No you don't, dear." She shouldered the pack, leaving him to the task of pulling on the socks and boots and hastily knotting the laces by touch, and then she put a hand on his shoulder. 

"No need to hover," he said petulantly, taking her hand and levering himself up. "I--" 

The world suddenly contracted around them, and he swayed against her on watery legs. Cotton wool swamped her head, and River heard the Doctor let out a hiss of pain as she struggled to keep him upright. 

Her temporal sense was limited, but this time she knew what to listen for in the timelines. For one agonizing second, River finally caught a glimpse of the time stream that the Doctor was trying to keep intact. He was right; it wasn't really a bubble at all. It was more like a ditch being furrowed down a sandy hillside. She felt the terrifying instability of more and more excluded events tumbling down from the flash point in space-time where the Doctor had diverted them, and she had no idea how anyone could stand against it. Even if they kept pushing forward on the path of least resistance, there was no way to avoid the eventual collapse. Fear seized her with the dawning realization, air stuck like concrete in her lungs until she couldn't draw a breath--and then, as quickly as it had come, the quarantine pressure relented. 

The Doctor straightened before he could fall, his short breaths already calming. 

"Are you all right?" River steadied herself and smoothed her thumb along the back of his hand. He gripped her fingers like a lifeline and brought his other hand up to her cheek, brushing trembling fingers across her brow. His face relaxed.

"Good for now, good as it gets." He blinked his eyes open and fixed his gaze on the sky beyond her shoulder, his face pensive. "She calms the timelines, like a temporal breakwater. But it's not . . ." The half-voiced thought trailed off. River couldn't tell if he realized he'd spoken it aloud. His hand fell as he tried to shrug off his sadness. "She can't feel me. So far away." 

"We'll get there," River said. "I swear, I'll get you to her."

He didn't respond, and River wondered if he could tease out the meaning of a promise that wouldn't change the likelihood of anything. He took the crook of her elbow again, turning his back on the hills. 

"Right. Transport. Best"--he balked when she took them a few steps back toward the truck in the loading bay--"best stay away from the laboratories. Too much activity. Collisions. Ripples." 

River nodded, shivering at the ghost impression of the amassing temporal avalanche she'd felt. They turned around instead and set off west toward the lake bed and the logistics vehicles, skirting the edge of the supply airstrip across the flat, packed dirt in the eerie stillness. 

Time crept up on them in fits and starts as they ran. Whenever River looked up, the sky was fractionally darker, and the clouds were frozen again in new configurations. Snatches of activity dotted the base; steam drifting up from the generator units, or the dim echo of a supply truck rumbling along tarmac. Twice more in their flight, River heard the Doctor's breath catch and felt his hand tighten against her shoulder as his temporal grasp on the quarantine weakened. Twice more, the likelihoods went haywire around them, trying to reintegrate the time streams into their natural order. River had to slow down and steady them both as strange, thick air pressed against her ears and caught cloyingly in her lungs. But though the barrier bent, the Doctor wouldn't let it break. She could feel how much it was costing him to maintain his hold, in the silent concentration that gripped his frame like a wound spring and the shuffle that dogged his steps more and more persistently. 

She hated seeing him like this. She hated that they had no choice but to flee like wounded prey. And she hated that it was so early in his timeline. Even if he could see her or hear her, her Doctor, for whom she would crush planets and break time itself, would still look at her with suspicion and listen to her with mistrust, and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing, except make absolutely sure that they escaped this prison, so that her past--and his future--wouldn't be rewritten here in the Nevada desert. 

The thought shook her concentration, and River misjudged a step downward from gravel to dirt. It jarred the Doctor's balance and he stumbled away from her. She righted him and forced herself to take measured steps. They were running out of time. She hated that he couldn't run faster. 

It was a relief when they reached the lots at the edge of the lake bed. The timelines were calmer here; she could feel the Doctor relax into exhaustion as she scouted the area for a good escape vehicle. Her first choice was an OH-6 scout class Cayuse perched invitingly on a secluded landing pad. But the Doctor had barely splayed his hands across the machine's blunt nose before he recoiled as if burned. "A helicopter? River!" he said, falling back against her and pushing her away from it. 

"Trust me, I can fly it--" she started. 

"Forgotten things," he hissed, and continued in short, slurred sentences. "To come with us in the bubble. No complicated past or--or future. Big ripple across the barrier, that," he pointed at the machine and grimaced, "will burst the whole thing by the time we're in the air." 

No, it couldn't happen like that. She wouldn't let that happen. River reached for the pilot's side door. "I can fly it fast--"

"No helicopters!" he shouted, straightened, and set his feet, clamping a hand down on her bad arm with sudden strength. Startled, River yelped in pain and nearly struck him out of pure reflex, but he didn't seem to notice and he didn't let her go. She whirled around and looked up to find his expression deadly serious, his blind eyes staring straight at her, and not a hint of a tremor in his grip. When he sensed her attention, he relaxed his hold and said very precisely, "Three minutes. Maybe five. How far can you fly in five minutes? How hard do you want to crash?" 

River stilled and studied his face. She felt his grip loosen even further and saw the first hints of weariness settling back across his frame. She spared one backward glance at the Cayuse. It really was a beautiful specimen. 

"This plan is _rubbish_ ," she told him. The Doctor concentrated for a moment, then raised his eyebrows in agreement and beamed at her, as though she were a struggling student who'd finally caught up to the lesson of the day. She turned his hand palm up, tapping as she talked. "What do you need?" 

He took her cheeks in both hands and kissed her forehead, seemingly rejuvenated, at least for the moment. "Find something old. Static. Easy to bring across. Buys more time." Then he let her go, focusing his concentration out across the base again. "Honestly, a helicopter," he muttered, turning to face the northeast hills. "Does anyone ever listen to me?"

"Whatever we end up with," River said with an enduring sigh, "you'd better not argue over who's driving." 

The Doctor just raised a hand and pointed. "TARDIS," he said, then moved his arm in a slow arc back across the base. "Laboratory." His hand passed the low buildings in the distance. "If I remember . . . water tower?" he asked, and River wordlessly repositioned his arm slightly to the right to align his pointing finger with the landmark. "Thanks. And sorry," he added after a moment, still studying the landscape, but dropping his hand to find her injured shoulder. She didn't flinch as he brushed it with his fingers. "About your arm. It's hurt."

River stared at his profile, and at the black disc embedded in the back of his neck. "It'll heal," she said quietly. 

He raised his hand up haltingly to the device, as if he could feel River's gaze on it. His fingers hovered over it briefly without touching, and then he took her good arm and oriented them both unerringly toward the rest of the logistics vehicles. "This way." 

In the end, he directed them to a dirt-packed lot whose only claims to civilization were a chain link fence overgrown with weeds, and a barely latched gate with a sign reading AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in rusting letters. River took the lead again as soon as she reluctantly discerned his target, an old Dodge M43 languishing in deep ruts at the lot's far edge. She guided him across the debris-strewn ground to place his hands on the rear door latch. His fingertips quested outward, tracing the subtle edges of the red cross painted over a white square, emblazoned over dull military green. "Ambulance," he remarked, pressing his cheek to the door. He gave a sad half-smile at some internal thought and then stood back and announced, "Hasn't moved in ages. Perfect."

Before River could point out the tactical inconsistencies in those two sentiments, the Doctor had felt his way past her over to the driver's side door, flung it open and added, "Love top secret bases, never lock anything. Give us a mo'!" before exploring the seat, step, and steering wheel, and carefully planning his foray into the cab. River visually checked the tires--all pressurized--then gathered a scrap of rebar from the ground litter and banged it against the fuel tank over the rear wheel to get a rough idea of the petrol level. Half a tank, she estimated. They'd get a better reading from the gauge on the dash after switching on the ignition, but starting it would surely test the quarantine boundary, and she didn't want the Doctor to try and bring it across if all it had were fumes to run on.

River tossed the rebar aside. This rust bucket was no Cayuse, for sure. It was a clunky dinosaur at the end of its line, but it would be good for a final forty miles. If the battery wasn't shot. If they could get it started and bring it across the barrier. If the whole rubbish plan didn't fall to pieces around them in the next thirty seconds, leaving them exposed and defenseless against the manhunt that was sure to follow as soon as Groom Lake realized its prisoners were nowhere near the laboratory examination room buried under its dry, dead soil.

"Come on!" the Doctor's voice came from where he'd disappeared up into the cab. When River came up to the driver's side door, she found him hunched in the seat at the wheel, his forehead nearly touching twelve-o-clock, his fingers tapping nervously at ten. "Allons-y River! No, no, no, that sounds awful, doesn't it? Don't answer that. I'm going to start the engine. Yes, best if I do it," he added at her unspoken argument. "It has a smooth future, but the transition across is still tricky." He stopped the tapping pattern and reached for her hand, guiding it to the same spot where his had been, and held her fingers there in place under his own. "So stay still, right there," he said, directing his speech at the dashboard, even though River was still standing outside the cab. “And think solid thoughts." 

"Solid thoughts? Sweetie--" 

"The timelines will be a bit . . . choppy. For a moment." With his far hand, the Doctor reached next to the wheel and gripped the ignition switch. His foot found the clutch and pressed it in. "Ready?"

Solid thoughts it was. River closed her eyes, steeling herself in the moment. Past and future existed as always, twining around them both, but what mattered the most was right here, right now. There was no room for doubt, and there was no point in fear or regret. There was only this present task, that would be completed with all certainty.

When she opened her eyes again, she found that was all the answer the Doctor needed. He had turned his head in her direction and was smiling at her. Exhausted, terrified, with every freedom he'd ever known at stake, he was still unable to keep the pure thrill of excitement from his next words. 

"Here goes," he said, and turned the switch. 

The truck sputtered and then rumbled to life, the vibrations humming through their fingers on the wheel, and then gaining momentum on a completely different plane and intensifying, temporal ripples rattling them both. The barrier stretched and wavered. The air shimmered, a mirage of deeper shadows shot through the twilight. Klaxons blared like tinny records in the distance, the sound cutting in and out, the echoing differentials of the two time streams pressing against them from all sides. The Doctor couldn't keep the signs of strain from his face, but he was otherwise calm. He murmured encouraging words at the dashboard, then clamped his hand even tighter around River's fingers and eased his other foot down on the acceleration pedal, revving the engine in neutral gear. The timelines _surged_ , and--just when River was sure they'd made a horrible mistake and everything was going to come crashing down around them--the world smoothed out again, silent and still but for the now-very-present ambulance and its ancient, ponderous, wonderful engine, idling away in the dusk.

"Ha! Transport secured!" the Doctor exclaimed. He sat back, dropped his hands like dead weight from the wheel and nearly fell out of the cab before righting himself. "I don't suppose--" he said, catching his breath, but River cut him off.

"No. And no arguing," she said.

He waved a limp hand dismissively at her before sitting up with weary sigh and feeling his way over to the passenger side seat. River swung up into the cab with their gear, tossed the pack through the partition door to the back compartment, and then reached across her body to pull the door closed. Her left arm protested sharply when she grasped the steering wheel, and she lowered her grip, testing the give in the wheel against the strength in her right arm. It was tight but manageable. 

The Doctor settled his shoulders gingerly against the seat and, finding nothing jarring the back of his neck, grimly strapped himself in. "I suppose I'll let you drive. Sweetie," he said through a frown. Then he gave her a ridiculous thumbs up gesture, and braced his hands conspicuously along the door and the edge of the seat.

"That's the best idea I've heard all day," River muttered. She wrestled the ambulance into gear, steered toward the rusted gate, and floored it. 

 

 

THIS TAPE IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE  
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY

SECURITY CHECKPOINT E8-X435 NORTHEAST  
RADIO TRANSMISSIONS TO MOBILE UNIT 279

PERSONS ON RECORD  
CHAVEZ, SENIOR AIRMAN RICARDO J, DISPATCHER  
DENNIS, AIRMAN PAUL E, PATROL DETAIL  
SANDIA, AIRMAN MARK C, PATROL DETAIL

04 AUGUST 1969  
20:37 HOURS

DENNIS: This is mobile unit two-seven-niner to base four-three-five, over. 

CHAVEZ: Mobile unit two-seven-niner acknowledged. This is base four-three-five. Is that you again, Paulie? Over.

DENNIS: Yeah, Rico, 'course it's me. We've been hearing those damned sirens for over an hour. You're the one with the promotion. What the hell is going on? Over.

CHAVEZ: Nothing new here. Base is still on lockdown, all test flights grounded. There was some kind of electrical surge, over.

DENNIS: Electrical surge, sure. Think Houdini's at it again? It's been a while.

[There is a two second delay.]

CHAVEZ: I'm not authorized to discuss that on this channel. 

DENNIS: Aw, come on, man! Give us something. We were supposed to end our shift at nineteen-hundred, and instead we're heading back in for another loop. The rain's already started, and Sandia's driving. I'm taking my life in my hands, here, over.

CHAVEZ: Command says the situation is contained and the patrols are just a precaution. Sorry, that's all I know, over.

[There is a three-second delay.]

DENNIS: Base four-three-five, Airman Sandia would like to officially log his opinion that Command is full of--

[The feed cuts off and then almost immediately comes back.]

SANDIA: --ck you, man, give me that! This is Sandia. Ignore him. Situation noted, over and--holy Christ! What--?

[Static interrupts the connection. There is what sounds like a loud crack of thunder and a deep rumbling on the tape.]

CHAVEZ: Two-seven-niner, come in? Paulie? Sandia?

[There is an eight-second delay before the connection clicks on again.]

DENNIS: -ree-five, this is unit two-seven-niner, do you read me, over?

CHAVEZ: Got you, Paulie. What the hell just happened, over? 

DENNIS (laughs): Nothing, man. [There is static and the sound of a curse from Airman Sandia over the line.] We're in a ditch, over. 

CHAVEZ: Two-seven-niner, repeat?

DENNIS: Sandia got spooked by some lightning and drove us right off the road. He thought it was headlights--

SANDIA (in background): It _was_ headlights! Nearly swiped us! Didn't you see a truck--?

DENNIS (aside): No, man, there's no supply truck due--

SANDIA (in background): Not a supply truck!

[The radio cuts out.]

CHAVEZ: Two-seven-niner, repeat, you saw a truck? Over.

DENNIS: Negative. There's no sign of a truck anywhere. Just us in a ditch, in the rain. Over.

CHAVEZ: Hell, Sandia, you're a menace! Paulie, do you need assistance? Over.

DENNIS: Negative, base. I'll drive; he can push. Over and out.

*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*

 

 

It was a tense, bumpy nine miles across the scrub basin east of the airstrip before they hit the foothills and then the steep northeastern pass. Atop the ridge, still miles from the base perimeter, the gravel road narrowed to a single checkpoint--a small parking lot lined with mobile patrol units, and a guard station with a flimsy gate arm drawn down across the access road. It was designed more for bureaucracy than security. River went around it easily enough, but less than a mile later, the Doctor suddenly cried out an aborted warning and grabbed hold of the steering wheel, turning them frantically aside. She had no time to ask what the hell he was doing before the effects of the quarantine swamped them again, signaling an impending collision in more ways than one. When it finally relented, River fought the truck's momentum and careened them back onto the gravel. Pain shot through her bad arm, nausea and light-headedness lingered, but she didn't dare stop. She chanced a quick glance at the Doctor; he had let go of the wheel but was still nearly doubled over in the seat, his fingers clawing at his hair and his breathing ragged.

"Patrol," he slurred. It was the first he'd spoken since giving her the driver's seat. "Near miss--"

But he couldn't finish the thought. The ambulance jolted over the uneven road and he hissed out a breath, casting his hands out in blind panic before bracing them against the dash and the door. River tenuously shifted her grip and tried to reach out to him, but he just inhaled sharply and shied away from her when she touched his wrist. He growled something that sounded like "eyes front, keep going," at her, and then fell silent again. 

River set her jaw and concentrated on the road, counting the seconds between the Doctor's hitching breaths. 

There was little she could do to make it easier on him. They abandoned the access road for some overgrown tire tracks as soon as they hit open desert, and it seemed to help quell the likelihood of collisions across the deteriorating quarantine barrier. The Doctor let out an unsteady sigh of relief, short-lived as River put on speed along the jarring escape route. She jammed her foot down on the acceleration pedal, urging the old ambulance up past thirty miles per hour despite its groaning in protest. She aimed a creative curse at the bucket of bolts and was surprised to hear a short laugh from the passenger seat. She hadn't realized the Doctor was still paying attention to anything other than fighting his exhaustion.

River doubted he could understand much, but just knowing that any part of her words got through to him was enough. She forced the tremor out of her voice and started a one-sided conversation. How did they get themselves into these messes? And how brilliant was it that they could always escape? She always loved that part, and well, she said suggestively, all the parts that came afterward. Not that she was going to give away any spoilers, so don't bother asking. Anyway, the TARDIS was just beyond the next ridge, the one that rose up from the darkening horizon right in front of them, getting closer by the minute.

The world flew by in static twilight, tall brush sweeping into the front grill in a shush of sound over the noise from the engine. The miles fell away and River kept talking. Nearly twenty minutes passed before the Doctor said anything in return.

"There will be some . . . afterimages." He struggled with the word. "A crash like this--it stirs up temporal echoes."

"We're clear across the valley, now," River said, but he didn't seem to notice. 

"Past events. Old--old paradoxes in personal timelines," he said. "Worse for us, inside the bubble."

Her hands tightened against the steering wheel. "Don't say that. It's not going to happen yet." 

"Worse for me, without the TARDIS. Dialed up past eleven and I can't turn it off. Time sense like . . . eyes forced open to stare at a blast." He was trying to keep even breaths, to speak clearly through his fatigue, but the words were getting away from him. River looked over and saw his eyes shut tightly and his hands white-knuckled in their grip on the seat. "I might . . . I might not remember where I am. Might try to find her--"

"Hold on just a little longer, my love." The wind gusted, the sky darkened, and the ground scrolling beneath them was suddenly damp with rain. "We're nearly there." 

He barked a short laugh at her obvious lie. "You're telling me we're close. We're not. I won't make it, I--"

He cut off as they rattled into the first set of gullies that led up into the next line of hills. River arced them to the left, skirting the foothills and heading toward the interstate highway that snaked its way over the ridge, not far north of their position. 

"Please," she said. A loud, low rumble set the ambulance shuddering. It was thunder; it was only thunder from the coming storm, that was all. She ground the acceleration pedal to the floorboards and growled a curse. "Why can't this useless scrap heap move any faster! Please, I . . . I promised--"

It was perhaps a mile to the interstate. And from there, it was another fifteen miles on the open road to the lake where Amy and Rory waited with the TARDIS. 

"Sorry. River." The Doctor reached for her arm, talking in short gasps. "Stop. We have to stop! Now, River, before we crash! Listen! Stop now! Why--?"

Events stuttered and surged like a squall, forcing River to fight for control of the ambulance as it veered nearly onto its side. Head pounding, shoulder screaming in pain, she jammed on the brakes, screeching the truck to a crooked halt across the shallow culvert they'd been following. The Doctor groaned at the sudden stop and then sat bolt upright, staring at her as their world shrank against time's renewed pull. The engine sparked; she couldn't turn it off with the thunder shuddering so violently through everything in exactly the way that thunder never could. Lightning flickered, casting shadows everywhere. 

The Doctor held tightly to her arm--not seeing, not hearing, but feeling the rush of the oncoming tide on a level she couldn't possibly comprehend.

"Why do you know how to fly a vintage Earth helicopter from nineteen-sixty-nine?" he asked, sounding rather put out.

"Oh, Sweetie." She smoothed her free hand across his cheek. "So many spoilers."

His expression softened, and he almost smiled. She felt the last of his strength leave his fingertips. "Spoilers," he echoed, letting his head fall back against the seat. 

The storm broke. The temporal wave crashed around them, dragging air and sound and light away with it, and the bubble finally burst.


	10. Interlude III

Time did not exist in lines. It was neither a matrix, nor a web, nor a tapestry. It was not a fabric whose strength of strand was measured in likelihood, nor whose complexity was revealed in the topology of its folds or in the interwoven patterns of its paradoxes and schisms. In her most linear, constrained states of consciousness, the TARDIS still recognized these simple lies, even as she accepted them as inevitable and necessary mechanisms for communication. She once had tried to show her Pilot directly, exactly, the nature of Time; when his brainwaves had finally recovered enough for cogent perception, the only lasting impression she could sense in his mind was _a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey . . . stuff_.

Fundamentally, she understood compression, translation, information loss. It took intertwining with her Pilot--those subjective centuries of psychic communion--in order for her to grasp the finer points of metaphor. 

For a timeless being, learning was the realization of a random process: a fixed point coalescing from the solid rules of potential to instantaneous, inescapable fact. She did not synthesize. She did not discover. She simply remembered--and in that way, she was learning, always and never. Linked so delicately to her Pilot, she remembered that the tiny sparklines of sentience in her continuum were not only receptive but _innovative_. Limited as they were, they reconstructed all perception from meager information and imperfect comparisons. More than that, they did so instinctively, and optimally from their frame of reference. To the extent it was possible, the eleven-dimensional mind boggled. 

(Some would say that a TARDIS communicated in riddles wrapped around nanoseconds that took her Pilot lifetimes to decipher. Rarely would anyone stop to consider that the truth may, in fact, have been the other way around.) 

When their link was broken, metaphor remained. It was the anomaly for which she could find no dominating frame of reference. She could remember every configuration of every fact and potential that ever is or was or would be, but nothing across that entire continuum could explain to her _why_ that knowledge was inadequate. Metaphor was a limit, undefined in an incomplete space. Its absent cause was dense and unavoidable, depleting the expectation of every possible moment she could experience, and it _ached_.

( _Are all people like this?_ she once will have asked, and oh, his face, his hilarious _face!_ Everything so new, new sight, new sound, new people so . . . _so much bigger on the inside._ )

The TARDIS shifted her focus to a six-dimensional manifold, and began searching for a particular symmetry. She knew it was there; she had already encountered its necessary and sufficient presuppositions. She murmured unrequited metaphors with each path integral spun across this surface, each one reminding her that something was missing. Something was lost. 

The full phenomenon she was searching for could not be experienced in anything lower than six dimensions, but that didn't stop her Pilot's people from recognizing its existence. Bound by empiricism, they could only categorize the concept insofar as their inadequate mathematics could express it--a precise series of postulates, predictions and observations that so narrowly defined the limits of what could be known. They called it _superposition_. 

Diverting temporal energy into low-likelihood configurations built up a potential that needed to be conserved across the continuum, they would explain. Enforcing rigidity in order to maintain mutual exclusion meant that, at the endpoints, the affected timelines would be forced in turn to oscillate across all possibilities simultaneously, with amplitude proportional to their importance weights. The resulting temporal echoes could be unpredictable, unpleasant experiences, when projected to a four-dimensional frame of reference. 

The TARDIS would never see what she knew as superposition in this crude, piecewise approximation, no more than a poet would see love in a study of chemical signals. She offered her own imperfect metaphor into the void-- _a plucked string, invisible, dances a dissonant chord_ \--and waited patiently for a response until she remembered she was alone. 

The raveling wave struck, battering her conditional stabilizers, and her cloister bell tolled again in constrained space. The predicted symmetry drew her into tighter and tighter focus, but it brought only black, terrible silence surrounding agitated time that she couldn't grasp, couldn't calm or control. A half-formed thought shot across all measure: _What have they done to us?_

With timelines re-knitting all around her, the TARDIS clung to her integrations, her temporal psyche resonating sympathetically with the echoes that crossed her paths.

_. . . Penny in the air . . ._  
_. . . Stand aside! . . ._  
_. . . What a trip . . ._

And in six dimensions, she remembered.


	11. Part 8

_Thirty men faced him in the flickering torchlight. He tightened his grip on his sword, servos straining against synthetic skin. Behind him loomed the Pandorica, its elaborate locks laden with dust_

 

"Zig-zag plotter!" A voice burst from the sound of static at his side.

 

_"Stand aside!" the leader cried, and he bit back a laugh. He had already stood with her for a span ten times their lifetimes. He would not be moved now. The leader shouted_

 

"Rory?"

 

_The leader shouted at him again_

 

"Rory! Are you listening?" 

Rory blinked and found himself staring down at the clear floor in the console room, the smell of musty stone still caught in his throat. His fingers were clenched so hard around the two-way radio in his hand that his biceps hurt. There were men--no, wait. Where had that come from? He shook his head and looked up. Thunderclaps rumbled the ground underneath the TARDIS, adding to the dull lament of the cloister bell. His head felt light . . . where was Amy? Only then did he remember that he'd heard a voice--

 

_"Stand aside! Caesar shall not--"_

 

The TARDIS lurched and Rory fell against the console. Something round and hard and just the smallest bit springy jammed him in the thigh and he bit back a curse. When he looked down he saw it was a pinball plunger. Looped over it, attached to a length of twine was a post-it note displaying a set of intricate concentric circles and a thrice underlined exclamation-- _THAT MEANS YOU!!_ \--in the Doctor's severe print. The twine was connected in turn to another piece of paper stuck half-way up the console, with a black arrow done in marker, pointing at a lever that Rory was sure had once been described as "only for show." His vision swam. Suddenly, it was all just a mass of colors and shapes swirling in front of him, with no dimension or meaning. Fear twisted his stomach; he was completely useless, and Amy . . . 

 

_"Caesar shall not be deprived of his prize!" Oh, if she could've heard that, Amy would have kicked this guy all the way back to Rome in the name of liberated women everywhere_

 

"Rory!" This time it was a shout from across the room. "Zig-zag--"

Another jolt from the TARDIS shook the memory free, and Rory dropped the radio in favor of grabbing the mustard dispenser and hanging on. "Yeah, all right, zig-zag plotter!" he shouted back. A pang of guilt struck him at the outburst--there was no need to lash out at her. But an apology could wait; he was too busy furrowing his brow at the console until it made marginal sense again. "What does it look like, Amy? This machine is worse than a kitchen catch-all drawer!" 

There was no answer. He looked up to see Amy hurrying down the stairs with the strangest expression on her face. He started to ask what was wrong but then found himself floating sideways. Amy's eyes widened almost comically, and she grimaced and flailed with all the grace of a fourteen-year-old basketball player as her legs left the stairs. 

"And there goes the gravity!" She tried to throw her hands up with the indictment and caught herself before she could float away from the staircase. Her trainer found a support post on the railing and she shot herself forward to the console, nearly barreling into Rory's side. "Zig!" She caught the pinball plunger and sent him spinning out of the way to make room for her arms between him and the mass of gadgetry. "Zag!" She grasped hold of something that looked like a cross between a gearbox and an old Atari joystick. Her hip knocked into his stomach as she jammed her foot underneath the pedestal and braced herself.

"Wait--" Rory said, but Amy just threw her body backward, using all of her momentum to pull the joystick toward them.

"Plotter!" she cried triumphantly, and they crashed down, onto the console and then onto the floor. 

"Ow." Rory tried to sit up. For a fleeting moment, he had the urge to check his interior casing for dents. Then his very human stomach lurched and he came two breaths away from losing his lunch all over his wife's backside. He rolled away from her, trying to chase away phantom senses: the smell of plastic and the subtle clicking sounds that fabricated joints made when they moved. 

"Zig-zag plotter," he groaned, staring up at the ceiling. The lights were eerie and dim, and though the worst of the jolting had stopped, the cloister bell still tolled mournfully. "Why didn't you point it out to me? I just wanted to know which lever to pull." 

Amy's head appeared over him, looking not angry as he had suspected, but unsure and scared. "Rory, are you all right? Please tell me you're all right."

"Hey," he said, reaching for her. "Hey, I'm fine. Just a bit . . ." _muddled_ , he wanted to say, but trailed off. He was trying to be reassuring, but judging by the growing frown on Amy's face, he wasn't succeeding. 

"Snap out of it!" Her temper finally flared, but her hands were still trembling. "I never paid attention in Latin and you know it! Oh--" She swayed on her knees. "Oh, my head . . . "

" _Qua--?_ " Rory sat bolt upright, finally hearing the words he'd been speaking ( _"En, valeo."--"Cur mihi id non mostraveris?" --"Qua forma, Amy? Machina pejor quam culinaria arca scrutaria!"_ ). His vision swam again, thoughts rearranging as he searched for the right context, and when he spoke again it was proper English. "Sorry about that. Sorry. It's all right. I'm fine, really." 

Amy breathed a sigh of relief. Rory offered his arm and she let him hug her close, steadying them both. The strange dizziness receded, and the cloister bell echoed and stilled. Amy sniffed against his sleeve and then looked up.

"What just happened?" she asked.

"A glitch in the TARDIS, maybe?" Rory cast his gaze around the console room, wishing he had a better answer in any language. He got to his feet and offered her a hand up. "Whatever it was, I think it's getting back to normal, now."

Then the lights went out, and with a mechanical sigh, the ever present hum of the TARDIS rattled and died.

 

 

In the examination room, the bubble breathed. 

Time reversed, gathering toward the spatial flash point that had been so precariously constructed here, amid the crushing strata of Groom Lake's long-dead past. Events converged along exponentially decaying radii and then crested, swelling the present moment to accommodate twenty-two minutes and three seconds. It was twenty-two minutes and three seconds that, until this inhalation, had been shaken free from the continuum's base measure, forced up like a ridge in a rug and set in motion. The temporal potential from this act propagated onward and was appropriated in turn for a reconfiguring of likelihoods--timelines coaxed and attenuated to six times longer than any linear progression of events should have taken. In effect, a mutual exclusion barrier formed, functioned, and then fell. 

Events caught up to the break point and backlashed. Time, rewound, poured its potential backward along the affected paths. Those who had been stationed in the examination room, weapons primed at the barrier's spatial shadow, may have seen a fleeting shimmer or a contraction mapped onto its dimensions of height, width, and depth. None of them would remember it. Despite the quickening of heartbeats, the tightening of fingers on triggers, none of them would realize that the true danger was not in the present or the near future, but in the past--a collection of fixed events suddenly set into flux. Their brains, wired for strict cause and effect, were simply not equipped to perceive the complex meta-temporal dynamics involved. 

But at the apex of this reversion, for two four-dimensional frames of reference, twenty-two minutes and three seconds suddenly existed again. 

One held fast, cushioned by an iron grip on a paradox that, by its very existence, was anchored in something greater than linear time. _Gotcha_ and _Hold on!_ echoed against dull walls as, battered but unbowed, he gathered twenty-two minutes and three seconds of pure potential around the paradox, bracing this newly formed past and throwing consequences as far to the future as they would go.

The second had only a superficial grasp that loosed immediately, and was sent spinning through this new time like a moth in a hurricane. Voices echoed impossibly from moments not yet spoken, images kaleidoscoping and stretching to strange tunnels, as events poured through a mind that had no place for them. It should have hurt, this twisting and warping of everything, but the only thought that came to mind was _what a trip,_ for ages and ages and ages. _What a trip._ Shouts like old arguments hurled through slamming doors, and the tinkling of breaking glass in the room sounded like a shattering ceramic, or like the ring of the shop bell down the street on a bright blue afternoon. Everything was merging together into one all-encompassing moment, and the only fear was that of standing on a precipice, looking up and down and out. _Don't even think of coming back! . . . I'm sorry . . . Let it be--_

Time surged forward again, breaking impossible bounds as the bubble burst, and all thought fled.

 

 

_You never really escaped us, Melody_

_Melody. I love your name! I'm Amelia_

_Stupid_

_I'm all yours_

_Are you married, River?_

_Stupid name_

_What, Rory?_

_Penny in the air_

_escaped us, Melody Pond. We were always coming for you_

_How have I got Rory?_

_Are you asking?_

_Only River Song_

_Penny in the air_

_all yours sweetie_

_Only River Song gets to call me that_

_And the penny--_

 

Her scream was lost in a crack of thunder that shook the world. 

River gasped awake, feeling something cold and unyielding at her forehead, inches from her face. Her past heaved, and her gorge rose; she was trapped here, trapped in every prison at once: a suffocating cage of glass and rusting steel in the middle of the Nevada desert, a cold cell in Stormcage, a containment suit beneath a silent sea. Lightning flashed and she recoiled from the barrier in horror, seeing a faceplate instead of a driver's side window, trading one desolate setting for another and hearing the echo of his voice in her ears-- _Don't you dare!_ She found the latch by muscle memory alone and released it, kicking the door open. 

A gust picked up where her feet left off, flinging the door to the end of its creaking hinges out into the dark. River followed it out, stumbling forward a few feet from the truck's interior. She sank to her knees, retching the contents of an empty stomach onto the damp ground. The heaves subsided to shuddering breaths as she forced herself to categorize the events swamping her senses. The impossible astronaut was long gone. The dead shores of Lake Silencio were behind her. There were snatches of a future she had yet to experience; she let them flow away like water through her fingers. She sat up, her memory struggling to keep pace with the present. She knew _now_ was here in the dark desert, its air heavy with the smell of dust and rain. A few drops caught in her hair; a lull between the fronts passing overhead. The constant rumbling of approaching thunder gave ominous undertones to the rush of wind. The truck she had fled was a shadow of angles, black on black in front of her. 

Lightning cast the night to day in a split second, illuminating the dull details of the cab: tires, wheel well, seats. The desert brush was blown sideways in the distance, momentarily visible beyond two open doors. She blinked away the afterimages, still trying to process her surroundings. Afterimages. The brush beyond two open doors. Beyond two--

Memory gripped her systems again, chasing away the last ghosts of her past and seizing her breath. River throttled her panic and staggered to her feet. Alone in the storm, she oriented herself in landmarks and momentum, her mind focusing on one thought-- _northeast_ \--as she scanned the shadows. Information coalesced and she set off with no torch or compass to guide her. Maybe it was her old programming kicking in, or maybe it was the TARDIS singing through the edges of her mind; the direction she needed to go was suddenly irrefutable, clear as day.

The Doctor was only about thirty meters away from the truck. He had made it to the far side of a swell of foothills and was crumpled among the boulders and shrubs dotting the bare ground. She didn't see him at first in the gloom, but then the coming storm reasserted itself in a dazzling _flash-bang_ that pulsated the air, leaving the smell of ozone and a deep reverberation that rolled through the earth. He lifted his head then, and the shadows were redefined into his lanky frame--head, arms, chest, and legs--pushing himself weakly up to one knee, one hand braced on the ground and another clutched to his ribs over his hearts. River reached him as he tried to stand, and there was no easy way to let him discover he was not alone, to let him orient or recognize or acclimate. He swayed and she simply caught him. The shock of her presence jolted through his body like a gunshot. 

He roared and fought her in pure, uncomprehending terror. The struggle was too much for her, and they collapsed. River took the brunt of the fall, cushioning him from the unforgiving ground. She tried to talk to him, but the stream of useless words could do nothing to explain the chaos of limbs, dirt and darkness that gripped him. He tried to scramble away from her, to run, but he couldn't keep his balance; he made it only to his knees before crashing into her again. River caught his hand and he lashed out, a blind swipe that sent him reeling even as it connected with her injured arm. She hissed a breath of pain and held onto him with her good arm, a strong and steady grasp on his shoulder. 

Tremors shook his body as he tried to make sense of her. His chest constricted with short, panicked breaths. His hand brushed her ear, tangled in her hair, and he gasped a wordless shout of surprise. His head fell forward, his other hand found her cheek, and he choked out a sob. 

"Please, Sweetie, it's me." River put her hand over his, guiding it across her features. "It's River."

Thunder rumbled the ground and his head shot up again, his hands falling to a desperate grip on her shoulders. This close to him, in the dim light she could see the shine of his eyes, wide and terrified. 

"Romana," he said urgently. _"Av Daleks edviram! Av--"_ More words spilled out, the language familiar but in a set of conjugations River had never heard before. She only understood a handful: _unravel_ , _mercy_ , _why_. She knew enough about his past to realize she didn't want to understand any more. _Old paradoxes in personal timelines_ , he had told her, and _Bit out of practice, haven't done this since the war._ The storm shook them and in a fit of strength he hauled them both to their feet, imploring her to _run, please, now_. But two steps toward the TARDIS had them on the ground again and he screamed in frustration, pounding a fist in the dirt, before trying once more to stand. 

"No, it's all right, you're not there!" River held him back. She could feel the strength ebbing from him as despair warred with terror in whatever nightmare had trapped him. "Oh god, wherever it is, you're not there . . ."

He seemed to feel the physics of her speech; he held a breath in concentration and swatted the air in front of his face before losing his balance again. The next words he spoke, River knew. _Romana, my love, I can't hear what you're saying. Why can't I see you?_ She tried to reach for his hand but the wind picked up, and another crack of thunder split the air. He shuddered, frustration descending to anger, and stumbled to his feet. River set her feet but he struggled against her, his words nearly swallowed by the coming gale. _We have to get back to her . . . Let me go! We have to run . . ._

His last link to the world was the whisper of his distant ship, and he was desperate to reach her. He had no idea that it was an impossible task. Even thirty meters back to their transport may well have been thirty miles, but she couldn't leave him here while she tried to start the truck again. The old ambulance was their only chance for escape, and she couldn't get him back there like this, not with him fighting every step. 

Touch was the only anchor he had left. River steeled her strength and took firm hold of his wrist. He flinched and tried to shake off her grip, but she held on.

"I'm sorry, my love.” Unwavering, she directed his hand up to the back of his neck. "I have to get through to you—I don't know how else to explain it." 

His fingers brushed the edge of the disc embedded there. Horrified, he closed his hand harshly around it and then cried out in agony. For a terrible moment River thought he was going to try to rip it out right there, but his knees buckled and he let go. She tried to brace him, but it wasn't enough; he hit the ground, hands and knees scraping stone. She sank with him, still repeating "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Sweetie," and trying to keep him grounded, hoping he could fight through his past along with the pain. 

Rule thirty-two. Pain was information, brutal but efficient. Always listen long enough to decipher its message.

"River," he finally said. His hands quested outward, trembling fingers gliding over the gravel and grime around them. "Desert. August--" He murmured something, a snatch of a song or a Gallifreyan prayer lost into the storm. "August, nineteen sixty-nine. How long . . .?" He sat up, seeming to concentrate and then grimaced, falling against her. "Time . . . torn apart. Hurts. Can't feel it--"

"Then don't try," River said. 

The skies opened up. She tried to help him up, to head back to shelter, but he put out a hand to stop her. 

"Stay here," he told her. "Here, River. Now."

Rain swept through, drenching them both and tying them to this bleak landscape, to this present moment. The Doctor sighed at the deluge of sensation on his skin, and lifted his head to face the storm. River just shut her eyes and held him close. 

 

 

Superposition.

It gave her focus a natural embedding, a pocket of structure in the unfettered continuum. So the timelines settled, and the TARDIS remembered.

She remembered _puny insect chases linear lures across our mind entrenched_. She remembered the stranglehold of total isolation in his delicate biochemistry. And she remembered the time they will have talked: sound and sight that ebbed away from her transient body until all that remained was the subtle warmth of touch. A final lesson from her foray into flesh and bone, his hand brushing her cheek. Translation: his palm flat against her outer shell. The whisper of his fingers tracing her corridors. 

She needed to concentrate. She needed to be ready.

Her cloister bell slowed and then stopped, as volumes long dormant unfurled from the projective corners in her shell's domain. Her primary systems shut down. Her console went dead; no longer heedless and inefficient but purposeful, diverting all reserve energy to her preparations. She didn't notice the blow this dereliction dealt to her occupants. She didn't see Amy's shoulders shake with silent sobs in the darkness as she wondered _What do we do now?_ , or feel Rory's resolve crumble with his remaining hopes that everything would work out if only they waited here, long enough. These were sets of measure zero and therefore fundamentally unimportant.

Something was lost, and the TARDIS remembered how she would find it again.


	12. Part 9

They didn't stay put for long. Amy had never taken kindly to things that made her cry, and when she could no longer keep her tears in check by swiping at her cheek, she gave the derelict TARDIS console a shove for good measure and stalked out through the main doors. Rory followed, of course, pausing for only a moment to look back at the silent control room before hurrying outside after her. Rain spat at him, the wind picking up in anticipation of the gale. 

"Amy!" he called, searching for her in the dusk. He saw a flash of movement at the front of the campsite by the old delivery van that had taken them across the country. He set off in that direction, catching her arm as she went for the door. "Amy, please! Where are you going?"

"I don't know." She shrugged him off, her words trembling with anger. "Somewhere that's not here."

"We can't leave the TARDIS--"

"The TARDIS?" She turned on him. "The TARDIS is giving up, if you didn't notice, and I'm _through_ waiting!" She put a foot up on the van's external step and yanked the door open. "You can come if you want," she told him, "but I'm driving." 

"Amy," Rory started. "That's--"

She reached for the steering wheel for leverage to help pull her into the cab, and found nothing but empty air. She fell back against Rory with a surprised grunt. He caught her easily, keeping them both on balance. 

"That's the passenger side," he said gently, steadying her on her feet. 

Amy found her balance again and slammed the door shut. "I hate America, Rory," she said, and once the tears came in earnest she couldn't stop. "I hate this miserable place." 

Lightning burned away the shadows and the ground shook. Fat drops started pelting the sheet metal, and Rory could hear the rain sweeping across the valley. It wouldn't be long now, and they were closer to the van than the TARDIS.

"Come on," he said, reopening the door and ushering them both up into the cab. "Before we both get soaked."

They hadn't been back inside since parking at the campsite the week before. The cab was still warm with the last of the day's heat. The rain followed them in, spattering across the passenger side bench seat and hammering against the glass when Rory pulled the door shut. After a few minutes of fury, the storm settled in with a steady background beat, but Rory could still hear the sounds in the cab in the forefront: breaths, the rustle of fabric, the creak of the cushions with their movement as he and Amy settled in as well. The storm was a different kind of sound, Rory realized, so insistent that the brain automatically filtered it out. It was the kind of noise that filled one's head during 2000 years of quiet waiting; the kind you never noticed until it was suddenly gone.

He leaned back against the seat, one arm around Amy's shoulders. 

"Something's gone wrong," she said, wiping her eyes. "We both know it." 

"We only know the TARDIS has shut down. We don't know why," Rory said. 

Amy shook her head. "We should have picked them up days ago. Something's happened." 

Rory looked over at the empty driver's seat. The storm flashed and a glint caught his eye: the key, still in the ignition. 

"We have to do something, Rory," Amy continued, her eyes traveling across the vintage instrument panel on the dash. "What if . . . what if he's . . . if they're both--"

She cut off. Her sudden silence set the rain beating sound at Rory's ears again. He rubbed tiredly at the bridge of his nose. "We can't just run away."

"I meant what I said. I can't wait here any longer. I can't."

Rory sighed. "I know. I can't either."

The storm passed, but the TARDIS seemed distant and uninviting, hulked in the shadow of the lakeside campsite underneath the stars. Instead, Rory found an emergency torch in the glove box and went around back, arranging the assortment of rugs and blankets that had been used to cushion the TARDIS' corners against the metal walls for her journey. "You won't scratch her," River had told them, but Rory had insisted. After all, there were rules to moving. And River had told them a lot of things. 

They lined the floor, fashioned a few makeshift pillows, and laid down together in the rear compartment with a view of the lake through the open back doors. It would get hot under the high sun in the day, but they weren't planning to to sleep late. 

"How long will it take to get to Salt Lake City?" Amy stretched out beside him, hands under her head. 

Rory stretched out too. "Six or seven hours. It's a fair way north of here." 

"Half a day." Amy groaned. 

"It's the closest state capital with a consulate. Our best chance at contacting UNIT." Rory tried not to let his frown color his words. River had told them that, too, right before saying, _I doubt it will come to that. But we may need two or three hours to get situated before throwing the psychic switch, so just hold tight._

It would be best for them to get an early start, he figured. Get some rest, pack up the TARDIS, and drive north through the worst of the isolated desert before the sun hit its peak. Before they changed their minds again, and the static noise of waiting consumed them both.

Amy blinked in the darkness. "This country is too big. If the Doctor were here . . ." Her thought trailed off. They were barely touching, but Rory could feel the tension in her frame; she was wide awake despite the hour. 

"If the Doctor were here," he echoed after a moment, "He'd tell us that all of America would fit twice over in the Ladies' section of the Intergalactic Henrik's on Aquarius Six."

Amy huffed a laugh, more nerves than humor. "Aquarius Six?" She snaked a hand down and twined it with his fingers.

Rory squeezed her hand. "Something ridiculous like that." 

She laughed again, melancholy, and let go. Rory closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

 

 

It was some time later when the rain stopped. For once, the Doctor could be no more precise than that. In the interim, time was as pervasive and patternless as the downpour sheeting against his body, the details like tracing the path of one droplet in the gale: unknowable. The vise hadn't let him dial anything down. The crash had hit his temporal senses like a bomb blasted at eyes and ears, overloading everything. Events that didn't scrape jagged probability against his nerves were muzzy and hollow instead. Aftershocks tore at him with the slightest change in likelihoods, history reverberating like thunder in the ground. 

He knew where they were and why; River had thankfully shown him that much. The pain that had shot out from his touch on the vise had held no candle to the agony of the past, and it had grounded him enough to recognize the grip of temporal echoes. He caught fleeting impressions of the TARDIS, too: a sturdy beacon beyond the crest of swirling seas. It hurt too much to try to focus on her. To his strung-out time sense, it seemed he should need only to reach out a hand and she would be there, solid and present as ever. The empty distance between them, reinforced on his skin by the rain and the hands holding on to him, nonetheless was a shock each time he tried to touch her and found nothing but River and the storm. 

They were in the desert. The TARDIS was miles away. Time could no longer be trusted, and the only thing more terrifying than that was the thought of letting it go. But he had to, if only for . . . just until . . . just for a little while.

Some time later, the wind had died back down to crisp, dry air. The worst of the aftershocks had settled. The pain had receded to its flash point at the disc in the back of his neck, and the absence of rain refocused his senses. 

He recognized desert night in the chill that clung to wet fabric and exposed skin, chased away in places by the still press of River's body against his. Her heart beat its rhythm into his temple and the bones in his cheek, a steady anchor that he used to map anatomy to the curves and textures he could feel. They were both sat on their knees on the ground, River straight and tall with one arm around his slumping shoulders. His head was resting high on her chest, cradled above by her chin and the sinews of her neck. Below was a hint of the soft fullness of her breast, and the firm interruption of a collarbone. His beard scratched against the buttons of her canvas shirt. His arms and shoulders ached from having one hand clamped around her wrist and the other tangled tightly in her clothes at her waist, his fingers brushing bare skin above her hip bone. 

Snatches of old academy lessons surfaced from his memory, and his hands flinched. It was improper to have such close contact between such asymmetric timelines. Secrets could slip out, timelines twined to breaking. Foreknowledge could be accidentally shared with devastating consequences--

He worked his jaw. The facts were here and now. He couldn't feel River's dim probabilities right now, not with time torn up and the quarantine gone. His telepathy was blanked and blindfolded, so he couldn't let any thoughts slip through an undisciplined link. There was no link; it was only touch. Only touch, for weeks--just touch and time. His breath caught, the recent past a dead weight on his chest, and he fought a wave of dizziness. He'd never . . . that was important. He'd endured, but he had never accepted it, not for a second. So many faces he couldn't see. So many hands he couldn't stop. 

They had to get moving again. He relaxed his grip and tried to gain his bearings on his own.

All around him, River stirred, like a mountain suddenly moving. He lurched, overcompensating for pitch and yaw in intangible space, and then the ground met him abruptly, scraping his cheek and rattling his teeth. He groaned; he must have done, a slow vibration that rose up and out from his throat. His fingers closed around wet sand and small stones.

River's hand touched his elbow. She said something aloud and the simple decisions of her speech grated so harshly he curled in on himself and told her to _stop talking right now_. Her hand flew from his side and she all but disappeared. Her decisions smoothed away but he felt a nauseating swell of chance fill the vacated potential. He tried to ground himself in time--an anchor of known words, phrases intertwined with the potential of here and now--but he couldn't pay attention to the mechanics; his words may have been English or fifty-first century Standard or Gallifreyan, or they may have been no words at all. Likelihoods slipped away to the pull of the past, his chest constricted, and he forced himself to

 

_Breathe. In for a three count, and out again as the needles branched, burrowing and burning and worse; tugging, pulling, testing the path forward with minute shocks at brainwaves already dulled and half numb from the intrusion. The maddening itch of it all. Then the vise spun down for this cycle, its shrill pitch whistling away to nothing._

_Breathe. In for a three count. Out again._

_"Layer sixty-one, branching complete." The voice was tinny and distant over the intercom. "Activating signal interference."_

_A hand at his bound wrist checked his pulse, moved to his chest and checked his respiration for the sixty-first time. He'd been unable to make out the medic's features since layer eighteen. After layer forty-five it had been nothing but shadows of light and dark. He braced himself for the usual response--"Life signs stable. Continue."--and the click-whine of the vise spinning up for the next endless cycle._

_It didn't come. Or rather it did, but he didn't hear it. He flinched in surprise when the vise started up again, a silent vibration in his skin. All the subtle sounds of the room were gone._

_His hearts pounded. He'd hoped until then, that maybe the device wouldn't be so thorough. Deafness smothered his ears like a physical weight--worse, so much worse than being blind. A sighted individual could become accustomed to absence of light, often flirted with it in adventures and peril. But true absence of sound was a rare encounter, isolating and altogether alien. Life signs stable, he spoke into the silence, or it might have been a mad laugh. Continue. Layer sixty-two commencing. And oh god, he had better not be screaming at them when the pain hit or he'd never stop, he had better remember to_

 

Breathe. In for a three count. Out again. 

The Doctor collected his thoughts as the aftershock receded. It was little more than a ripple of recent history stirred up from the crash, that was all. It was likely the last of them. When he rediscovered the present moment, he also found River tapping insistently into his palm. Her decisions this time were bearable, smoothed across the painstaking pace of Morse code. After a while, he focused past the immediacy of dots and dashes to decipher her message.

_ORT TRANSPORT TR_

Yes, yes. Back to the truck. A very practical consideration, under the circumstances. He freed his hand from River's grasp, pushed himself up to hands and knees, and managed to find the correct equilibrium this time for sitting upright. God, he was tired. Everything hurt; everything was damaged. He needed to sleep. The vise wouldn't let him enter a healing trance, though there were some meditation techniques he could employ instead. Grounding the mind in the minute details of one small task, he knew, helped to optimize internal systems for healing without the conscious redirection of resources that a trance required. But right now, it was too much to contemplate. Simple oblivion was all he could manage, and it would be enough to start his senses recovering.

It wasn't the thought of sleep that terrified him. It was the thought of waking afterward, of not knowing where or when he was . . . anyhow, there was no time for that. The truck would likely need some repair; aftershocks hitting the engine's inanimate memory would manifest as age affecting the systems active at the time of the crash. There might be odd weathering patterns, or sudden corrosion. No time for dilly-dallying. He had to tell River. No time . . . 

A tentative touch traced down his arm to his elbow. He brushed it aside and shivered. The cold seemed to settle in the folds of his clothes, blinking against his skin when he moved. Strands of wet fringe caught on his eyelashes and he swiped them away, irritated at the unruly lengths his hair seemed to have reached. He closed his eyes, as much for their own protection as for the mere fact that he couldn't seem to force his eyelids beyond half-mast. His hands trembled and he scrubbed them roughly over his scalp, stopping short of the back of his neck when the sensation threatened pain. He lifted his chin from where it seemed to have fallen to his chest.

Right then, the truck. He supposed the blasted thing was around here somewhere.

Ever patient, River gathered his left wrist and for some unfathomable reason pointed his hand off to the side and slightly behind them. Then she turned his palm up and tapped. Some time later, he managed to work out what she was saying.

_30MTR. WALK?_

Yes. Well. First things first.

 

 

THIS RECORD IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE  
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY

04 AUGUST 1969

INFIRMARY LOG: Admissions  
SUPERVISING PHYSICIAN: Cpt. Edward M Curtis, MD, AFMS 

Page 6

21:12--James, K.: Patient presented with blackouts/fatigue, nausea, disorientation, auditory/visual hallucinations. Admitted for observation. 

21:14--Carillo, M.: Patient presented with blackouts/fatigue, nausea, disorientation, auditory/visual hallucinations. Admitted for observation.

21:17--Ogden, C.: Patient presented with blackouts/fatigue, nausea, disorientation, auditory/visual hallucinations. Admitted for observation.

21:18--Duvall, H.: Patient presented with blackouts/fatigue, nausea, disorientation, auditory/visual hallucinations. Admitted for observation.

21:21--Sandia, M.: Patient presented with blackouts/fatigue, nausea, disorientation, auditory/visual hallucinations. Admitted for observation.

21:25--Litzinger, J.: Patient presented with blackouts/fatigue, nausea, disorientation, auditory/visual hallucinations. Admitted for observation.

CON'D NEXT PAGE

* END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL *

 

 

The clouds didn't pass through so much as dissipate into late, moonless night. Stars winked into existence, a few at first, and then suddenly they spread like scattered sand across the night sky, outlining the shadows of surrounding hills from a backdrop of inky blue. Painted across the desert's barren bowl, time and space pressed a cold weight into River's skin, stiffening her fingers and grinding in her knees. Her muscles shivered, shot through with tremors. The short walk back to the ambulance seemed to take an age. 

The Doctor breathed unsteady exhaustion beside her as they picked their way across hardscrabble and brush. He kept a desperate grip on her waist, his arms thin but wiry, still deceptively strong even after all he'd endured. The task was not enough to occupy his mind, always ten steps ahead of even his most frenetic physical pace. He murmured at her; sometimes it sounded like muddled instructions, and sometimes it was just declarations unknowingly spoken aloud. He couldn't keep his feet for more than one or two steps, and her one good arm wasn't enough to keep them both upright. They stumbled and fell more times than River cared to count, leaving her staring up again and again at the indifferent sky. 

How many of those stars had they visited? River wondered. How many TARDIS trips blinking in and out across the vortex? The light that reached them now had taken no shortcuts; the view was a snapshot stretched across millennia. The hated slow path. 

"Not far now," she said when they'd gained their footing again, but the Doctor still flinched at her spoken words, hitching a breath in the darkness. She didn't say any more, just steadied him for the next few steps. He sighed and scratched at his face. 

"Beards," he muttered at the ground. "Not cool."

Finally, the ambulance's black outline coalesced from the deeper shadows, cutting across the stars and close enough to touch. River placed the Doctor's hands against its solid bulk, and his legs gave out in relief. They both collapsed, soaked and sapped of strength, against the rear door. 

Searchlights panned the sky behind the hills to the west as River worked open the rusted latch. Groom Lake was on alert. She kept an ear tuned; there was no hint of sound yet from aircraft or vehicle patrols, but neither would there be any more storms tonight to delay them. Afterimages from the re-integrating timelines had likely affected some of the base personnel--those who had been close to collisions with the Doctor and River on the other side of the quarantine, at least. She had to hope that confusion and chaos from the temporal crash would buy them enough time. 

By River's estimates, she and the Doctor had gone nearly twenty-five miles. A little over half of the journey. If the truck was a lost cause, they would have to walk at least one mile to the highway to have any hope of stopping and stealing a vehicle on a desolate stretch of road in the dead of night. At most, they would have to walk fifteen miles back to the TARDIS. 

The searchlights dipped below the hills. River yanked open the door and set to helping the Doctor up into the rear compartment. 

It was pitch black inside, cramped and stale. The Doctor took the metal step clumsily beside her, crashed to the floor, and snapped irritably at her when River offered more help. She relented, letting him map his surroundings as she felt for their supply pack and dug out a torch, setting it atop a high shelf and casting the objects he was exploring into sharp light and shadow. He veered toward the front compartment and found it blocked by her legs; she took his hands and guided him to the edge of the narrow berth running the length of the ambulance's right side. 

He pulled away with a frown, trying to tell her something greatly important, but it came out as a mixed slur of languages that she couldn't hope to decipher. When he hauled himself halfway to his feet and nearly plunged head-first into the corner of the rusted wash basin across the way, River caught him by the shoulders and braced them both against the back wall. She uncurled his fingers from his palm, trying to give herself a clear voice for him to focus on. 

_REST_ she tapped into his hand, lowering them both down to sit on the berth. Plastic cushions sighed and cracked underneath them, disturbed from their desert-baked interment. The Doctor's breath quickened when he finally translated her letters. 

"Can't. No time," he slurred, and swallowed thickly. He was shivering and barely awake, but frustration at his limitations kept him tense and haggard. He so hated helplessness. No matter age or history or oblique intersections of their timelines, from their very first clash in Berlin, River had always known his stubborn determination and had always loved him for it. But the best thing he could do now to help their situation was to trust her, to let himself sleep and recover for what time was available, before his body simply gave out from fighting it. 

_REST_ she signed again. His only reply was a string of broken Gallifreyan, cut off with a grimace and a half-hearted curse. She set the supply pack between them and helped him pull out dry clothes--a soft cotton undershirt and the lightweight jacket she'd brought for him. He made no effort to examine them and seemed only peripherally aware of their purpose, not making the connection until River tried to help him out of his soaked shirt. When her fingers brushed his waist, tugging gently up at the fabric, he recoiled. 

"Hands off!" He swiped hard at her wrists, knocking her aside and sweeping the pack onto the floor in the process. His foot caught the bag and he kicked it out of range, propelling himself backward until he reached the far end of the berth, his shoulders against the corner formed by the back wall of the cabin and the outer wall of the truck. Over-alert, eyes tracking nothing, he splayed one hand flat against the smooth steel wall and gripped the edge of the cushion with the other, forcing words past shallow breaths. "Please, no more, no more hands . . ." 

River closed her eyes. Impotent rage--at the desolate Nevada desert, at herself for acting without thinking, at every human being that had done this to him--dizzied her. Worse, an ache shot through her chest, fueled by memories of an intimacy that he had yet to forge with her. Touch was all he had; already the cruelest of senses to use across their unshared history, and all she could do was corrupt it even more. 

She quickly buried the thought. She couldn't dwell for one moment on that distance between them; it hurt too much, and it wasn't fair. 

"Stop, please, hands off," the Doctor breathed. "Just stop." It sounded like the last words he ever wanted to utter, a plea that would have fallen on deaf ears for months. There was nothing she could do. They were still miles from safety. The Doctor needed River Song tonight: the enigma, the woman who could face down an armada of Daleks with a one-liner and no fear. He didn't need the comfort of a lover's touch. He didn't need his wife. 

"All right. I'll leave you be." She kept the words calm and impersonal despite the lump in her throat, but he couldn't follow her meaning and just hissed in pain from whatever temporal impact they caused. When she shifted her position, he felt the movement through the cushions on the berth and jumped, pounding a fist at the wall.

"Stop, stop, just stop!" he snapped, and River froze. 

For the breath of a moment, the words hung in the air, and then the compartment descended back to stillness. She didn't move, hardly breathed while the Doctor tried to regain his equilibrium. Eventually, the fact that she had heard him--that she had _listened_ \--must have sunk in, and his panic started to fade. He loosened his grip on the cushion, mapping the edge of the berth with his fingers, before scrubbing his hand at his face. "River," he said, finally coming back to his surroundings. "River . . . where? No time." He lapsed into more broken Gallifreyan before cutting off with a growl of frustration. 

Something in the phrase caught River's attention. It was the same Gallifreyan phrase he'd tried before, she realized. Same words, same cadence, same tone. And she had no idea if he was even aware of what he was speaking aloud, but she suddenly knew it, like pieces of a puzzle slotting into place. She'd never heard them spoken before, but she had read those words, studied them at university. It was a koan.

Temporal koans. Ancient Gallifreyan artifacts--what artifacts survived--were littered with them. Not quite poetry, not quite songs; they were something in between. Something that sang through timelines and potential the same way music sang through sound. She had never been able to explain to her professors that the markings embellishing the written words were time-sensitive. She had never been able to convey how she knew the pitches that resonated in different timescapes and skimmed across likelihood, how each koan was tied to one moment and one place, and always echoed against it when recited correctly. 

He tried again, and cut off again. His fist poised to pound at the wall, but he stopped, hand trembling, at too much of a loss to follow through with the action.

River's breath caught. All those songs he'd sung. There was no way he would ever give Charles Ogden and Henry Duvall anything as complex or precious as a Gallifreyan koan. But a merging of words and melody--each one a crude, linear snapshot; each one a reference point to orient in disassociated time . . . 

All those songs.

"No time," he murmured, hands falling to his side. "No time."

Spoilers be damned; she couldn't leave him like this. So River folded her hands in her lap, focused her mind on the timescape and the words she'd studied so long ago, and began the recitation. 

She felt stillness weigh on him as she spoke, but he didn't flinch or cry out as he had before. So she continued--passive, unobtrusive, offering nothing but her best attempt at resonance and pitch anchored to his planet's ancient past. It took every ounce of concentration and temporal awareness she had; a melding of time, speech, and sound that, under normal circumstances, the Doctor would have been able to achieve with hardly any thought at all. 

It must have felt like the faintest echo to him, but it was enough. By the second stanza, he was beside her again. He pressed one hand to her chest over her heart, feeling the fullness of sound in her lungs. His head sank to rest on her shoulder, and she kept her eyes closed for concentration and privacy, focusing only on words and likelihood. His hand mapped upward, hesitating at her face. His fingers traced her lips and jaw as she spoke, then searched for her temple and retreated again. 

River came to the end of the verse, hitting the last resonance with an imperfect chord and wincing at the dissonance. But all she felt from the Doctor was a soft exhalation of breath--surprise, perhaps, or a silent laugh. Even with so much of his own time sensitivity damaged from the crash, even with her clumsy skill, he still recognized the recitation. He still knew the perceptions that were needed to communicate it. He raised his head in the darkness, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear.

" _Who are you?_ " he asked, the Gallifreyan form for _ever and always_ echoing along the koan's fading refrain. And then, either by decision or fatigue, he finally let go.

Tension melted from his muscles like a burden dropped to the ground. River sat forward, gathered the pack and placed the dry shirt and jacket in his grasp. She held back this time while he carefully navigated the change of clothes around the back of his neck. That took the last of his co-ordination and he sank down to the berth afterward, offering no resistance as River helped position him on his side. She put the pack on the floor in easy arm's reach, tracing his fingers across the hard shell of the canteen inside and tapping _H2O_ into his hand until he grunted a wordless acknowledgement. She shifted position and started to reach for the torch, but she was surprised to feel the Doctor's grip tighten on her fingers before she could stand. She turned back to him.

"I can't stay," she said, smoothing her thumb across the back of his hand. 

The Doctor didn't move or open his eyes, only said, slowly and clearly, "Check the wiring for corrosion." He released her hand and was asleep immediately. 

"Of course, dear,” River said, looking up at the dull gray shelves surrounding them. Then she stood, collected the torch from its high perch, and set to work.


	13. Part 10

THIS TRANSCRIPT IS CLASSIFIED *TOP SECRET//BOARDWALK MISTLETOE//NOFORN*

PROPERTY OF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE  
GROOM LAKE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT AND XENOTECH RESEARCH FACILITY

SUPPLEMENTAL EVIDENCE  
COLLECTED AND SUBMITTED BY E CURTIS ON BEHALF OF C OGDEN, N.R.O.

05 AUGUST 1969 0430 HOURS  
INVESTIGATIVE DEBRIEF  
SANDIA, AIRMAN MARK C  
BUILDING 6: INFIRMARY, ISOLATION ROOM 241A 

PRESENT PARTIES  
CURTIS, CAPTAIN EDWARD M, AFMS PHYSICIAN  
CALDWELL, COLONEL MARTIN C  
JAMES, STAFF SERGEANT KEVIN J

[The tape clicks on.]

COL. CALDWELL: --something I should see. Doctor, is that a tape recorder?

DR. CURTIS: Yes, sir. Major Ogden and Doctor Duvall requested audio records of all pertinent interviews and data gathering while they were still indisposed in sickbay.

COL. CALDWELL: Now they're all about procedure, after their prisoner's put my whole base on alert all night. 

DR. CURTIS: Should I turn it off, sir?

[A siren is heard in the distance.]

COL. CALDWELL: (sighs) No. Leave it on. But Sergeant, make sure it makes it into the Controlled Information Archive.

SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir.

DR. CURTIS: Regarding procedures, sir. Since Sergeant James was cleared for duty, I think we can clear the rest--

COL. CALDWELL: Sergeant James was released under my authority for mission critical operations. Also under my authority, the N.R.O. can cool their heels in isolation until we get their mess contained. [the next words are spoken closely into the recorder] And you can quote me on that. 

[there is the sound of a door opening] 

SGT. JAMES: So, let's see this 'anomaly'.

DR. CURTIS: Mark, how are you feeling?

AMN. SANDIA: Much better--what do you mean, anomaly? Oh, god. God, Colonel Caldwell, sir . . . Sir, I--

COL. CALDWELL: At ease. Don't stand on my behalf. 

AMN. SANDIA: (taking short breaths) Anomaly, sir, is that bad? Am I gonna--?

DR. CURTIS: Calm down, Airman. You're going to be fine. They just want to ask you some questions.

AMN. SANDIA: But I heard about--

COL. CALDWELL: We're not here to discuss what you heard, son. We want to know what you saw.

AMN. SANDIA: Saw, sir?

SGT. JAMES: On patrol. At about twenty-fifteen hours this evening. We have reports that you had an unusual encounter when you were coming back to base.

AMN. SANDIA: Yes, sir. I told Paulie--

COL. CALDWELL: Who's Paulie?

SGT. JAMES: Airman Dennis, sir. 

COL. CALDWELL: The patrol partner?

SGT. JAMES: Yes, sir. 

COL. CALDWELL: Is he here?

SGT. JAMES: No, sir. 

DR. CURTIS: He had moderate symptoms and was cleared for active duty six hours ago. As I told Major Ogden, sir, and he found it significant enough to draw your attention: Airman Sandia is the only soldier with severe symptoms who wasn't also in the direct vicinity of the East Laboratory bubble at any point this evening.

COL. CALDWELL: Right. The bubble. 

AMN. SANDIA: I didn't--pardon me, Colonel, but I didn't see any bubbles.

COL. CALDWELL: So, Airman, tell us what you did see.

AMN. SANDIA: I told Paulie--Airman Dennis. He didn't see anything but it was there, driving like a bat out of hell. Clear as day, and then it was gone, like--I'm not crazy, sir. Like it was invisible.

COL. CALDWELL: Invisible. An invisible vehicle?

SGT. JAMES: Security reported all classified land and air prototypes are accounted for, sir.

AMN. SANDIA: Classified? Classified--no, no. It was old. Rusted. 

COL. CALDWELL: Was it--wait a minute. What? What did it look like? 

AMN. SANDIA: Colonel, it looked like an old truck. Like from the decommissioned lots.

SGT. JAMES: Twenty-fifteen was a half-hour before we saw any movement in the bubble. There's no way--

COL. CALDWELL: We know jack-all about the god damned bubble or what it was capable of. What I want to know is, has anyone checked the unclassed vehicles against inventory yet?

SGT. JAMES: I--I don't know, sir.

COL. CALDWELL: All right, enough with interviews--

[The tape clicks off.]

*END OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL*

 

 

The Doctor's assessment had been right on target; when River finally got a look at the ambulance's internal workings, she discovered that some form of temporal corrosion had disintegrated the wiring for the starter system. It took precious hours for her to rebuild it, salvaging intact wires from the lights and non-essential instruments, stripping sheaths and twisting the exposed copper filaments together with cold-stiffened fingers. She spent the night in a slow cycle of diagnostics and adjustments, either leaning over the engine block under the truck's open bonnet, or stretching across the driver's seat to examine the tangle of cords and couplings ferreted out from under the dash. The detail work itself was manageable, but anything requiring strength or flexibility sent jolts of pain down her bad arm. 

Dawn tinged the sky by the time the ambulance responded to its bare-bones ignition switch, the engine shuddering to life with a low, guttural growl. The transmission was still in gear from the night before, and although River still had a foot on the brake pedal, it didn't stop the chassis shaking as the gears ground. It was accompanied by a crash and a muffled shout from the back compartment. Startled, River killed the starter switch. The engine sputtered to stillness just as the connecting door to the back was thrust emphatically open.

"Oi!" The Doctor appeared at the door frame--first his hand gripping the edge, and then his face, looking pallid and cross in the dim light. "Give us a warning next time!" 

"You're awake," River said. "Can you understand me?" She put her hand over his on the door frame. He flinched but cocked his head toward her. "How are you feeling--?"

"Stop talking," he interrupted with a scowl. "And stop asking questions! Bubble burst, I'm recovering but the damage is done; I've no idea what you're saying, and I don't like . . . guessing." He frowned in distaste at the word, waving a hand at her before adding sharply, "So stop talking!"

"Feeling better, then," River said to herself, studying him in the twilight. He had a death grip on the thin metal door frame. The hours of rest had helped him to concentrate on speech again, obviously, but his body language was tense and unsure. She tried to take his free hand in order to talk with him, but he moved it away, scrubbing a knuckle at his face. Light glinted with the movement--he was holding something, but it was too dark to see clearly what it was. 

"Damage done," he muttered to himself, and then turned his head toward her position. "Beards. Rubbish! And then you scare the daylights out of me. Am I bleeding? Can you see?" 

That caught River's attention and in one swift move she'd swept the torch up from the floorboards, where it had been set to light the spaghetti strands of cords, to point at the door frame instead. The Doctor didn't so much as blink when the light hit his eyes, and River filed that simple, horrible fact away with all the other incentives she had for making every last person at Area 51 pay for what they'd done. She got a better look at him in the light. He was holding a small pair of steel scissors, she realized, from the first aid kit she'd nicked for the supply pack. They were closed and he held them firmly by the blade. She saw a small scratch on his cheek--no hint of blood there or on his hands, but in the light she could see that something looked different. It took her a moment to figure out what it was.

"Are you _shaving_?" she asked. "In the middle of our brilliant escape?"

"Yes. No? What did I just say about questions!" He scratched at the newly trimmed hair on his chin with the scissors handle and squinted at her.

"Sorry, sweetie," River said, reaching gently for his wrist. "But I can't talk properly if you keep your hands to yourself."

He sighed, relinquishing the scissors to her and opening his palm. Despite his obvious fatigue, his hand was steadier than it had been the night before. The tremors in his fingers had subsided. 

_NO CUTS,_ she tapped, and he relaxed against the door.

"Good," he said, blinking into the darkness before closing his eyes. 

When he didn't elaborate, River tapped the scissors handle to his palm and asked about them: _HELPS HEALING?_

"Keeps the nervous system disciplined," he confirmed. "Can't go into a trance; can't feel the systems properly. But a meditation--a simple physical task, helps." He straightened up again, focusing on the wall behind the driver's seat. "How far is she?" he asked.

They had swerved during the crash and were facing nearly southeast, but the Doctor's sense of direction was unerring. River set the scissors aside on the dash and tapped a longer message. _TARDIS 15 MI. STILL FEEL HER?_

"Dim but clear. She's the only thing that is." He released the door frame, tried to gain his bearings, and renewed his grip, shaking his head in disgust. "How long has it been since we crashed? I can't tell. No time--it's all hollow. Empty. I--I can't . . ."

He stopped, suddenly short of breath, and pulled his hands away from her before River could tap out an answer. His agitation grew, and the space seemed to constrict at the same time; too cramped and small for his limbs, full of obstacles and strange angles. He brushed the side of the passenger seat, his hand tangling in the seatbelt, and recoiled against the back of the cab. River tried to steady him but he just groaned.

"Out," he said desperately, and she was already moving--heading them both through the compartment to the back door, working the latch and kicking it open as he spoke. "Out! No walls, no straps! Please, River, get me out of here. Now!"

His last plea echoed out across the open desert. The cold air hit them and he shook off River's touch, stumbling forward but keeping his feet to escape the shadow of the ambulance behind them. In front of them the sky washed out to light blue over the eastern hills. The rock and brush stretched away for miles, the colors suffused with gray in the morning light. The Doctor took three steps into empty space and sunk to one knee, head down, steadying himself with a hand on the ground and trying to catch his breath.

River left him be, and went back into the truck for the water canteen. He was still gaining his bearings, straightening up with his feet underneath him when she jumped down from the back compartment to the ground. Still in a crouch, he turned in her direction, a curious expression on his face. Then all of a sudden he fell forward to knees and elbows, his hands splayed widely on the ground.

River dropped the canteen and hurried to his side. "Are you all right--?" 

"Stop talking!" he hissed, and pressed his cheek to the gravel.

She reached for his hand, but he kept it firmly on the ground. She tried to see what was wrong, but it was then that she recognized the problem. Not by sight. By sound. A distant, thudding pulse of blades beating the air. And if there was air support, there likely was also--

"Why do I feel an engine?" The Doctor finally clamped a hand around her wrist. "River, didn't you turn the engine off?"

 

 

_"Do we have enough petrol?"_

Amy was nearly back to the control room with her supplies, one hand clutching a paper shopping bag, and the other pulling at the handle of a dusty green wagon she'd found to help transport the heavier items. She couldn't reach the radio at her belt, so she let the question stand. A second query came just as she reached the outer door.

 _"Repeat, how are we on petrol? And did you get more water? Ah, over?"_

She set down her burdens, unlatched the door and poked her head out. Rory was a few feet away, radio in hand. He had backed the truck up to the TARDIS and was standing beside it, assessing its positioning relative to the blue box. He had just started to flick the radio button on again but turned around instead when Amy opened the door the rest of the way. 

"I filled the canteens." She swung their two camping canteens by their straps onto the ground beside the door before turning back to the wagon. "And I found a petrol tank," she called, lugging a vintage steel gas can out into the campsite. The sun was still behind the hills, and the morning chill hadn't quite left the shade of the small copse of trees surrounding the TARDIS. It wasn't that much cooler than the derelict console room, but Amy still shivered a bit. 

Rory frowned at the rusting, five-gallon canister that Amy plunked onto the gravel. "Will that get us far enough?" 

"No, I mean, I found a _tank_. Attached to its own pumping station, in a garage with a motorbike, three boats and some kind of pod car." She opened the door the rest of the way, revealing the wagon full of five more mismatched canisters, spanning approximately eight decades of automotive history among them. "Help me with the rest of these."

"Well, that's a good sign, isn't it?" Rory gave the TARDIS an appraising look before lending a hand with the rest of the canisters. "Do you suppose she's trying to be helpful again?"

"Helpful, how?" Amy set another can down and stopped, letting Rory take the last two. She fished in the pocket of her windbreaker until she retrieved the sonic to wave at him. "I had to use this to open every door."

"But you did get them open," Rory tried, setting the last canister down and wiping his brow. "It's like, before, if I wanted tea in the middle of the night--it might take a few tries to find the kitchen, but the first cupboard I tried would have a box of assorted flavors. Like that."

Amy reached through the doorway and swiped the shopping bag from beside the empty wagon, rattling its meager contents. "I searched four pantries for something we could take for the road, and all I found was a box of granola bars." 

"So that's everything?" Rory asked, shouldering the canteens.

"It's all I could find," Amy said, cross. "I didn't want to go on a quest."

Rory looked in on the empty console room, and drew the doors together. He ran one hand down the left door's edge, his other lingering on the handle, before closing up the TARDIS with a soft click of the lock. It was a move Amy had seen the Doctor do a hundred times on their travels, and it made her chest ache. She turned away to start hefting the canisters toward the truck. Rory's next words were directed more at the box than at Amy, anyway. 

"I'm sure granola bars will do nicely," he said. 

The TARDIS was having none of it, it seemed. She had apparently lapsed from eccentric to outright contrary overnight, because when the time finally came for them to get going, she wouldn't budge. For the cross-country trip, they had wedged the jack from the truck's spare tire kit under the TARDIS' front side, cranked it up to tilt the ship on one edge and then guided it down to cantilever against the lip of the back end so they could push it into the delivery compartment, face up. This time, they couldn't even get the jack under the foot of the blue box. 

Rory had his back against the TARDIS' door, legs straining to lift the frame even a fraction of an inch so Amy could position the jack underneath for leverage. Amy was giving it her all, but there was not even a crack of space between the blue wood and the dirt. It was like the ship had grown up out of the ground.

Rory gave a final shove before collapsing against the door. "It's no good," he said through heavy breaths. "I can't move her." 

"We got it _out_ of the truck when we got here." Amy chucked the jack aside to make room and joined him, both of them sitting knees up with their backs against the TARDIS. "We must have left out a step. Maybe River did something with the controls."

"Maybe the TARDIS just wants to stay put," Rory countered. 

"No. Not now. Not after everything. . ." Amy trailed off. She wasn't going to give in to a Time Machine that didn't ever want to travel again, even if it was only in the back of an old delivery truck. 

"What's different from last time?" Rory looked up, studying the deadened windows. "What do you want, eh?" he asked.

"Stop being nice." Amy stood up and rapped on the door. "Hey you! TARDIS! Get your act together because we're leaving for Salt Lake City, this morning, and you're coming with us. Lighten up! Don't make me come in there and--"

"Oh," said Rory, quickly gaining his feet.

Amy turned. "Oh, what?" 

"'Lighten up'," Rory repeated. "Last night, how did you turn the gravity on?" 

"With the zig-zag plotter," Amy answered. "The Doctor showed me ages ago. Fifth position, from the left side, two hands--"

"Right, right," Rory interrupted. "Do you think you could turn it back off again?"

 

 

River had them up and moving immediately. She couldn't be gentle about it; when the Doctor swayed after leaping to his feet with her, she just placed his hands at her shoulder and elbow and set off, trusting him to find his balance as they headed for the truck.

"They'll search from the air," he announced in her ear, deaf to the pulses River had already identified as a lone scout helicopter--likely the Cayuse they'd been forced to leave behind. "Support for patrols. We need to stick to the hills as long as possible. How far is the motorway? Is it morning? What's our--"

She had to change her stride, veering to close the ambulance's open back door, and the Doctor cut off with a shout of surprise. He lost his footing and let her go, stumbling two steps and slamming an outstretched hand into the side of the truck. His momentum carried him the rest of the way and he jarred a shoulder hard into the sheet metal above the wheel well. River quickly elbowed the back door shut and helped him lean back against the body of the truck, grasping at his hand at the same time he was trying to shake the pain out of his fingers. 

"I'm all right!" he said, pushing away her attempts to communicate. "You can't--you, you don't need--" He grimaced and closed his eyes, forcing himself to take a deep breath and swallow his rising panic, before trying again. "Do what you have to. No time for me, for questions, for this!" He spat the last word, gesturing toward the back of his neck before putting a hand out to her, trying to regain his bearings.

He was right, of course. In the flat, featureless desert, they'd soon be in view of their pursuers. There was no time for even a veneer of control on his part. River was the only thing standing between him and total disorientation, and her choice now was explain or escape. It wasn't any kind of choice, obviously, but she hesitated, just for a second. Once they started out, there was no communication until they reached the TARDIS. If they reached her. If not. . . 

One second. Half a breath. So much she needed to say.

"Sweetie--" she started, in the same moment he found her hand. He twined their fingers. 

"I trust you." He brushed a clumsy kiss on her knuckles and squeezed her hand. "Time to run!" he told her, and their second was gone.

River hurried them both toward the passenger door, working the latch and yanking it open. A scowl flashed across his face when she guided his hands past the seat belt straps, but his thoughts were his alone. She made sure he found a hold on the door frame, and then sprinted for the driver's side. By the time she had rounded the vehicle, hauled herself in and started the engine, the Doctor had strapped himself in, two feet and a world away.

She cranked the truck into gear and rumbled off, gathering speed for the last leg of their escape. In the side mirror, she caught a sign of their pursuers; small dust clouds puffed against the backdrop of the far hills, the rocks behind them reddening in the sunrise. The re-worked engine groaned and ground over the rough terrain around the foothills ringing the valley they'd crossed overnight, but soon they were speeding as fast as they could go. The passenger side window had cracked in the crash, and air streamed with a staccato pulse through the eccentric gap in the glass.

"So! You seem well traveled!" the Doctor shouted over the noise. "Do you know this one?" 

River chanced a look at him. He was still holding on for dear life but had his head up, feeling the wind on his face as he continued on in a barely controlled, terrible tune. 

_"Weeell, I'm getting bugged driving up and down the same old strip! I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip..."_

She tightened her grip on the wheel, her eyes flicking back to the mirrors. "Working on it, my love," she said under her breath.

They skirted the eastern hills for as long as possible, trying to keep out of sight. But they couldn't stay hidden forever; the foothills were too rocky to navigate in a dilapidated cast-off. It was a tradeoff of stealth versus what speed they could muster on the open road. River did the maths in her head, calculating velocities and accelerations, estimating the change point--where the helicopter would pick up their trail, and when the trucks would change course to follow--weighed against their added speed to optimize the angle they should take to reach the road. Nothing added up, so she summarily ignored all of the numbers, chose a vector, and made a run for it, a clattering last dash for the exits. 

The Doctor was just starting in on what sounded like a progressive rock anthem in 7/16th time, when they hit the large jolt and smooth sailing of the asphalt road. He cut off abruptly.

"What? Motorway, already?" he stammered, his voice loud in the sudden absence of terrain. River reached for the gearshift and his searching hand brushed her wrist. He caught her hand, the grip too tight to be anything but terror. "Too far away," he said hurriedly. "Too soon, we'll be seen! " 

"Too late for that." River glanced at the side mirror, tracking the glint against the sky. The helicopter had picked them up before they hit the highway. She couldn't tell him that it had been there for the better part of three minutes already, and while it was holding back, the trucks crossing the valley were steadily gaining on them. She shifted gear and the engine surged. 

"Faster," the Doctor urged. "We need--" Without warning, he fell hard against her hold on the gearshift, knocking it out of position. The truck lurched and stuttered, gears grinding with a terrible choking noise as River fought with the clutch to keep them moving. Pain lanced down her bad arm, and the Doctor's hand fell away. 

"What the hell was that?" she shouted before she could stop herself. Of course she received no answer from the Doctor. He was cradling his head, holding one hand out for balance even though the truck was righted and their trajectory was smooth again. She had no time for diagnostics or concern. She kept moving.

"Turning? Why are we turning?" the Doctor asked, the words slurring to the point that River wasn't sure he realized he'd spoken aloud. Then he swayed again, clutching at the seat. "Can't you drive this thing straight?" he demanded.

"Sweetie, I'm driving straight," River countered immediately. She jammed her foot on the accelerator in frustration, checking her mirrors. The convoy was moving faster. Four minutes passed, and she could make out the silhouettes of the soldiers in the lead truck tailing them. There were snatches of three other vehicles: two jeeps and another artillery truck snaking behind, weaving in and out behind the lead along the roadway. The helicopter swung low, speeding up nearly to their position, and then fell back again. 

River catalogued her assets. A nearly empty tank of petrol attached to a dinosaur of an ambulance that had been ready to rust into eternity before they'd stolen it. A pair of scissors on the dash. The Doctor reeling beside her, holding his head and trying not to fall over in his seat. His brow was furrowed, his eyes shut tight in equal parts concentration and terror; but his sense of balance and direction seemed completely lost. 

"Turning… No, not--not turning, it's something else!" he hissed. He tried to sit up and fell hard against the seat, jarring his neck and stifling a gasp of pain. His hand searched for purchase on the dash and he growled, "I don't like this!"

"Neither do I," River said to herself. The chopper pulsed noisily above them again, and dread ate at the pit of her stomach. Assets…. she kept churning through the list of assets in her head, as though there was simply something they had missed that would solve everything. They had no weapons; only the supply pack and some heavy torches. The only advantage they were gaining was the terrain, which grew rockier when they hit the highway's pass over the last set of foothills between them and the lake. They were still miles away from the TARDIS. 

The road rose and curved ahead, disappearing into swells of hills. There was a chance for some cover if they could open a wider gap on the convoy among the turns. But they had no chance of losing their tail as long as the helicopter stayed in the air. It would be a standoff at best. They had to gain some distance--

A loud _pop_ cracked the air outside, and the whole chassis jolted down hard. River ducked away from the window and cried "Get down!", although she really didn't need to; the Doctor couldn't hear her and couldn't keep his head above the dash if he tried. The truck careened sideways.

"I think we lost a tire!" the Doctor shouted. Outside, the sound of metal screeching on asphalt drowned out the helicopter blades. River chanced a look through the mirror; the rear driver's side tire was shot and shredded. They were driving on the rim. She hardly had time to compensate before there was another burst, and another hard jolt downward. 

"And another one!" the Doctor added helpfully. 

The whole back of the truck sledged behind them, a dead weight on the engine. River ground the accelerator to the floorboard and took the first smooth curve into the hills at speed, blown rims screeching protest on the asphalt. Through the mirror, she watched a jeep peel off from the convoy, accelerating easily toward them, trying to flank them and get a clear shot at the cab. She swerved hard across both the highway lanes in a last ditch effort to keep them behind her. It was a miscalculation; the turn was too sharp for their momentum even with the rims dragging at them in the back. The wheels locked and instead of straightening, they started in on a sickening skid. The back end dragged and sparked and the front tires burned against the pavement, filling the cab with heat and noise and the smell of burnt rubber. They reached the edge of the road and the truck teetered, its momentum pushing them up on the right side wheels, heading at a cockeyed slant for the stone wall cut into the hill to make way for the road. 

Adrift in the tumult, the Doctor cried out beside her--"River!"--her name half a plea and half a scream in reaction to the force of gravity from the turn. The front tires lost the road, jolting them downward and slamming the front grill into the wall, metal scraping against stone. The spin continued and the passenger side mirror twisted and broke against the hill. The window shattered. The engine coughed and churned and then cut out completely. 

Ignoring the glass and dust, River reached for the Doctor's hand. They'd made it so far, but it wasn't far enough. It wasn't good enough, and now everything was spinning out of control. _I'm sorry, Sweetie_ , she tried to say, _I'm so sorry_.

But those words didn't come. 

_You don't fail, Melody._

Kovarian's voice shook her to the core, even if it was just an old echo of a memory. But River couldn't stop it resurfacing, and with it the tactics and training she'd spent a lifetime trying to forget.

 _You don't fail, Melody. You weren't bred for that. You only--_

The truck's back end finally met the wall. The impact threw them apart, hurling both River and the the Doctor hard into the restraints, and then everything came to a dead, silent stop.


End file.
